Latest / The MeatEater Podcast / Ep. 054: Steven Rinella talks with Carmen Vanbianchi along with Janis Putelis from the MeatEater crew.

Transcript

Ep. 054: Steven Rinella talks with Carmen Vanbianchi along with Janis Putelis from the MeatEater crew. · The MeatEater Podcast

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: This is the me Eater podcast coming in you shirtless,
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: severely folk bitten and in my case, underwear listening podcast.
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: You can't predict anything, all right, Carmen, tell me your
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: last name again, Van Biancy, Van Biancy. What do you
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: think about squid jigging? It was great. I hadn't done
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: that in years. We grew up doing that in the
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: Puga sound. It was a it was a birthday party
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: thing in my family. We had a fall birthday. Wheould
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: you go any time here? No, actually descembrate. It was
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: my sister's birthday. And you guys are j squid. Yeah.
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: We sometimes will take a group of girls down on
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: the dock and now, would you guys clean house? Like?
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: Were you guys better at it than than than? Uh
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: than than me? And Yanni are at it? Not much better?
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: I mean, we didn't have our own lights, so we
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: just go onto the ferry dock and just fish wherever
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: the pools of light from the um fairy lights were.
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: And so I don't know, that doesn't seem to bring
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: as many in. We do better some nights where some
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: other nights. Yeah, I'm addicted to it. So now, uh,
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: it's squid season in in the Pacific Northwest. They come
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: in shallow to spawn. They congregate November and December. I
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: read it they spawned between like five and thirty ft
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: of water um and then people show up down on
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: the piers. Like it seems that the squid are kind
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: of drawn to light. I don't know if their prey.
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: I don't know if they're drawn to light because the
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: stuff they're feeding on congregates around light. There's a lot
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: of like things people don't there's a lot of things
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: that people have different opinions on about squid. Now why okay,
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: First off, a squid jig. This looks like a it's
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: like a little celind, like a glow in the dark,
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: little cylinder, and there's no hook on. There's a bunch
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: of wires up facing, upturned wires that impale the squid.
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: You're you're snagging squid? Now why do you feel? And
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: I'm not you're not a squid expert. What's your theory about? Why?
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: What is that squids interaction with the squid jig? So
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: my squid knowledge is based on a national geographic that
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: I owned when I was little and a um my
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: first report I ever did in elementary school which was
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: on octopus and squid, and so my own got started.
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: You got started in biology early, Oh yeah, very early. Um. Anyway,
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: my understanding is that in the absence of doc lights,
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: they're congregating in moonlight, and they're congregating to mate, and
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: so when they see that flashy squid jigs, they try
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: to mate with it, and that's when you get them.
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: That's what you think they're doing, because I I've had
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: people tell me that I think it's like, I think
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: it's like a feeding thing. Okay, I've heard both. I
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: heard a guy saying it's their territorial and he's trying
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: to fight the jig. I've had guys saying they're trying
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: to mate the jig, and I've had guys saying they're
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: trying to feed on the jig. Because people catch a
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: lot of squid all times a year using jigs and
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: outside of the spawning season, like we caught a giant.
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: Uh my friend and colleague Ben O'Brien called a giant
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: a different species. The ones we were getting getting last
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: night are low legal opallescence. Its common name is the
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: market squid. He caught a big fatty. I don't know
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: what it was that's some bitch hit a halibut jig. Now,
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: I don't think he's trying to breed that halibut jig
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: in June. He's got different opinions about it. Seemed to
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: like light. I wrote a whole article about it, and
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: I never I like it was years ago and outside
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: Magas I wrote a piece about squid jigging and Puget
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: Sound and it was partularly interesting to me is that, um,
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: it doesn't look like you're normal fishing, your normal American
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: fishermen down there, because the people like to fish squid
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: in Seattle are generally the immigrant communities from Southeast Asia,
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: particularly from my own conversations with people, a lot of
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: people from Vietnam, a lot of people from Laos, a
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: lot of people from Cambodia, Filipinos, and a lot of
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: these guys that I had interviewed before had fish squid
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: in their in their home countries, even some guys that
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: had come into the seventies towards after after the fall
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: of Saigon. Some guys that come over and they had
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: jigs squid, same deal, have a light and light, but
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: also talked to guys that fish with poison and guys
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: that fish with dynamite. Yeah, that's a long way to
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: get some squen. This guy was telling me years ago.
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: This is this is I wrote this article. I remember
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: it was right after the terrorist attacks because I was
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: I lived in Montana, and I hadn't spent a lot
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: of time around big buildings, and it was right after
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: the terrorist attacks. And remember it was December, the December
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: after the terrorist attacks. And I remember, you know, the
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: around Seattle, there's so many planes criss crossing, and I
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: couldn't watch a plane while in my field of view
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: there was a large building without thinking that it was
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: headed for the building. I remember being like so paranoid
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: where I'd be like half watching my rod tip and
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: half waiting for a plane to burrow into a skyscraper.
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: So I always have it fixed in my head that
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: it was December two thousand one. Um, the hell's I
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: getting net? I don't know about. I don't know who's
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: who's squid jigging on the docks here in the Pacific Northwest. Yeah,
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: that was what it was. And yeah, and very few
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: now you see you see like some you see like
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: a handful of white people around. It was generally people
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: from the from Southeast Asia. Oh I don't. I was
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: gonna get that now, I interviewed a guy. My interview,
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: I mean it's like basically bullshitted with him on the
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: pier while you're squid jigging. Um, he had fish squid
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: in Vietnam, came to the U. S. And Sev had
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: no idea and what would walk along the piers being
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: curious about the area where his flashlight and one day
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: shined a flashlight in the water, saw a squid and
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: started squid jigging. Now he doesn't claim to be the
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: guy that like fathered squid jigging, but he discovered it,
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: not through hearing about it and seeing people. He discovered
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: by walking down and seeing a squid. And that's when
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: he started squid jigging in future sound. Yeah, I don't
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: know the history of it here, but um, ever since
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: I've was little, there's many people out there and yeah,
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: I don't that's because I don't know. Like if I
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: was at my place in Southeast Alaska right now, would
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: I go out on a float and knocked the ship
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: out of squid if I shined a light in the
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: water or is it like peculiar to the area I
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: don't know, Like, I don't know if people fish squid
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: here because there's squid here, or people fish squid here
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: because there's a population of people who are interested in
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: fishing squad because people doing it, so they do it. Yeah,
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: Like I grew up in a place where people go
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: way out of their way to catch yellow perch. Here
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: is the best yellow perch fish in the world. No
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: one fishes them, it's just local culture. Maybe. Yeah, there's
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: no panfish culture in the Pacific Northwest because everybody's got
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: a salmon centric view of the world. What do you
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: think about I think more people would get after it
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: because it seems like figure it out. And kids love it. Yeah. Yeah.
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: We had my two older youngsters out there and they
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: have a good time. I mean they're not like necessarily fishing,
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: but they're just taking it all in. That's what kids,
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: that's how kids fish. At first. I loved it when
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: I was little was it was exciting to get to
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: go out at night and you're bundled up and you
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: have hot chocolate and it's just cool experience to be
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: outside at night. Like most cold weather outdoor activities, just
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: hot chocolate involved. So all the kids are in and
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: like every other worthwhile pursuit, there are some people who
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: are really good at it and a lot of people
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: that suck. I'm in the suck category. And like what
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: we had, we had fifteen yet fifteen maybe, and we
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: watched some boys next us. They probably filled the bucket. Yeah,
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: they caught everyone, Yeah, fishing the exact same ship. They
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: had a bright as Yeah. I think as a little
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: experiment you should get. Greg was dipping over into their light.
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: He wasn't pulling squid out like that, yeah, but he
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: was kind of on the edge of it. I mean,
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: they definitely had some differences in tackle. Longer rods that does.
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: That doesn't account for everything. It doesn't come for everything
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: little every little thing matters. Yes, And the longer rod
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: does a few things. One, you've got more play in
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: the rod. It's a softer rod tip, you know, so
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: who knows. So maybe when you're jerking it with a
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: stiffer rod, maybe they get out of the way, you know,
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: because they're feeling it more. And that softer pull of
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: the longer, softer rod impales them in a different way
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: that you know, they can't get off double jigs to Yeah,
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: I do that too. And the reason I got away
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: from it is have an inexperienced anglers, like when I
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: had my kids or whatever. They lose so many jicks,
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: so then they're losing two at a time, and then
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: if I put two on, then they're like, why don't
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: I get to right? And then you'll be like, well,
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: because you'll lose them, and then it's like you're an asshole,
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: Like you're like, you know what I mean. So that's
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: why if I was if it's just like you, you
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: were out, we would have been running two. But you know,
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: it's just hard to get I think it's hard to make.
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: They're set up as much as possible, and then if
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: still nothing's changing, we're just going to go over and
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: learned Cambodian or the last time. Last time I was out,
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: I was running two and had a nice double. I
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: saw a guy get a triple two on one and
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: one on one a double. He had a double rig
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: triple squid. I know that half of the ones icon
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: were impaled, like in the side, but that's that's just
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: something that happens. That's what I'm saying. It's like having stance.
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: They were swimming by. I impelled him with my jig motion.
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: Most of the ones I saw coming in with the
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: guys next to us looked like the squid was hooked
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: like between the Yeah, no, there's a there's a lot
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: of mystery to it now. One time I was out
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: there my buddy Drolls in two thousand one, and we
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: went down and we had just a regular sixty watt
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: light bulb. We had a battery and an inverter in
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: a sixty watt light bulb, one of those aluminium shrouds
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: you put around a sixty wild light bulb. And we
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: went down there right at dusk and knocked the ship
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: out of them, like we had over half a bucket.
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: So there is stuff like there's a voraciousness I think
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: they get. They get fired up, you know, and hit
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: batter like maybe sometimes it's so good, any idiot, right,
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: sometimes it's so good. Any of these gonna do good.
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: Last night, it was like the men were separated from
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: the boys, the women from the girls last night by
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: those two dudes next to us, because there was probably
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: twenty people on that pier and two guys. We're knocking
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: the ship out of the squid, and it was killing me.
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: Big Ones, Big Ones, I don't think we caught a
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: single squid. As they were falling. The hook them on
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: the face. Man, it's hard to say face because their
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: eyes are at one end and their mouth is at
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: the other. It's because their feet are at that same end. Yeah,
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: they're jacapod. They have ten well, they have like eight
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: two arms and eight legs, but a total of ten.
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: Two of those things are longer than the others and
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: have different cups, like a different suction cup array on them.
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: And they got a beak like a bird. Yeah, a
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: hard black hooked beak like a bird. I got bit
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: by that one. Ben O'Brien called it hurt um. Now, Carmen,
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: tell tell me what's your job description? Well, like, how
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: do you describe? I guess I described myself as a
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: wildlife biologists. I went to school for and I got
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: um wildlife Management and conservation degree from my undergrad Humboldt
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: State University in California, Northern California. Big dope smoking area,
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: big yeah, especially in county. That's what I'm saying. My
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: buddy always pointed like I got a buddy from Humboldt
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: County and um and and uh when he says Humboldt County,
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: a certain segment of the American population, their ears perk
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: up when it's probably less so now, but back in
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: the day, Yeah, like his father ran a hydroponic supply
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: store there, you go, probably did well. Yeah, so that's
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: the first thing that people think of. But it's also
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: a beautiful place that's uh great to learn about wildlife
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: because we were just constantly out in the field learning
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: all the waterfowl. It's a huge waterfowl migration area and
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: birds everywhere. You've got the ocean, you've got redwoods, you've
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: got the mountains. So it's a really good place to
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: go to school for that. But you weren't hunting back then, right, fishing,
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: but you didn't hunt. Uh you know, yeah, I didn't hunt. Um,
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: when I was in college, there were a lot of
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: hunters in the program and I was starting to get
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: really interested in it and knew that I wanted to
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: do it. So then um, when I graduated from there,
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: I uh started actually taking action on it, and I
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: went out and bought a gun not really knowing what
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: I was doing, and took hunter safety and um, I
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: just kind of started putting it together from there. But
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: but anyway. So, yeah, I call myself a wildlife biologist, um,
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: and I concentrate on carnivores. So most of the work
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: I've done has been with carnivores. My master's work was
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: on links um in Washington, and UM, so most of
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: the most of my career has been just working seasonally
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: all over the country different projects. Just yeah, you say,
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: like like you're like a like field biology though, right, Yeah,
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: because you're out there catching and trapping and track and yeah. Yeah,
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: so for example, yeah, mostly, Um, I started out Actually
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: my first job was uh after my second year of school,
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: and it was in Hawaii working with hawks bowl turtles
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: honoring turtles, which, um it was a pretty couch job.
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: We camped on the beach, waited for turtles to come,
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: and then basically put them in a full nelson, which
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: didn't work. The first time I tried to do that,
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: turtle just kept on going like there was nothing on
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: top of her. Yeah. I didn't quite have the body
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: type for that, but hold on, hold on. So I
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: obviously don't know about this turtle that you're you're speaking of, turtle,
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: big turtle, thee in Hawaii there, Well, I think, yeah, yeah,
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: maybe probably I think there's some overlapping size, but I
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: don't know what an average one is. But that's like
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: a wheelbarrow big. It was huge, very very strong. And
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: so this turtle comes up on the beach. We've been
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: told you restrain it by jumping on it, putting it
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: in a full nelson, and then the rest of the
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: crew will tag it while you've got it. So arms
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: under his front feet. So yeah, yep, you're on the
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: turtle shell. Your your front arms are under the front flippers,
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: sort of lifting them up so they can't get any purchase.
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: And then you know, your hands are locked over its neck.
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: So I did that. You can't come around and grab you. Yeah,
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: these are nesting nesting turtles. And just to keep it
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: in one place so that you can put tag on
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: its flippers. That's what they tag them. Uh, because it's
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: easy to just punch through the skin on the flippers.
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: I've caught, like when I've caught tagged soft shells. Here,
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: they clamp it right to the back of the shell.
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: She's like a perfect place to put it. You put it.
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: It's a flipper. Yeah. It was just a little metal
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: tag with a number on it, not like a track
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: and devoy right right right, um, and they will they
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: will try to get you when you're trying to restrain
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: it probably, I mean, yeah, you don't want to put
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: your hands in front of their face and then their
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: flippers are just flying and it can be kind of
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: a rodeo, especially when I did it, because I just
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: didn't have the weight to hold it down, so it
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: just kept going. So we swapped out. We gotta figured
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: out anyway. That was my first job, and that was
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: also my first dially into trapping, because we would trap
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: mongoose around the beach to try and keep those populations
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: down there invasive there, and they just try to control
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: a mongoose from getting the eggs. Yeah, yeah, have a
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: heart catchmen have a hearts, um, and then we just
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: euthanize them with CEO two gas. You just pick up
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: the trap and you put in a plastic bag and
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: you have a tank and you shoot a shot in there.
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: Because you get the same effect by it's closing off
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: the bag. It just takes forever. Right, That might be
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: a Sloan painful sort of deal. So this is fast,
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: and you could check your little trapline and farrell cats
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: and rats too. Yeah, when I've been in Hawaii. Do
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: you see a lot of those freaking mongooses around me? Yeah? Man,
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: it's a problem invasive. You know, the turtles there, what's
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: the other? So there's the hall, but there's the other
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: kind of like a green. Yeah. Now last year we
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: were on a family vacation and I was spearfishing there
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: and I'd go out at night and you dive down
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: under the coral ledges and you bump in face face
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: those turtles. It's like everything underwater scary. Everything underwater at
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: night it's even scarier. And it's like on the beach
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: it's like, oh, it's a big gas turtle underwater and
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: always be like kind of intimidating to roll up on
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: those things. And one time I went down and there
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: was a turtle laying there under underwater under a coral
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: head and there was a collar, you know, like a
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: unicorn fish feeding on the turtles head and it was
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: a big collar, and I didn't want to obviously hit
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: the turtle, and so I corrected so much to try
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: to get the collar but not get the turtle out
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: out missing the fish off the back side of fishcause
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: I was even I was like point blank range I
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: was just paranoid about messing with that turtle, which is
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: like an image stuck in my mind as giants because
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: they don't like attack people. But anything like that just
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: seems kind intimidating underwater man out of your element in
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: the water too, I find I you know, I run
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: around in the woods all the time, and I've worked
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: with predators and I I don't worry about bears, I
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: don't think about cougars. I'm not I'm totally comfortable. But
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: in the water, I just I did some circling when
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: I did that job, and I would just be I
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: couldn't stop thinking about sharks. I just felt so out
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: of my elm went and it's just not you know,
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: just not what you're used to, you know. I guess
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: that's what you're used to that you're comfortable with. But yeah,
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: because I used to I used to have some of
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: that fear of like I used to have more of
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: a fear of grizzlies. But it just gets used up
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: somehow or goes away, you know. Yeah. I mean I
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: think you just get comfortable and you're your perception of
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: what the risk is changes. You start to realize that
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: it's usually overblown. So what was the next animal you
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: worked on after? After the turtle work, they're trying to
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: find out about the turtles, just mark and recapture, like yeah,
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: it was a monitoring project and then we'd mark the nests.
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: It was also an effort to protect the nests um
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: and then in the fall when they hatch in late summer.
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: I actually wasn't there for that part when the nestlings hatched.
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: They're trying to be there to get as many as
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: possible to the ocean, just to get them over that
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: first hurdle of making it alive. It's like mechanically assisting
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: m yeah, predators away, helping them get back right, Yeah,
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: because that's the that's their vulnerability rights. Yeah. Well and
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: then also in the water. Not many of them make
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: it anyway, but I think the ideas to just give
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: them a little better of a chance to make it
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: because there's because they're struggling a struggling species. Yeah, how
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: many times, but do you know how many times when
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: those females might breed. I don't know. I that was
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: my one and only dally into reptiles. Yeah, that's the
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: weird thing about what was animal populations like that? Or
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: like fish and they're laying foul and eggs. Well, in
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: the case of turtles are laying a dozen or more eggs,
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: they're gonna live for decades. Presube lay eggs dozens of times. Yeah,
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: and then it's like if they can, if they can
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: have two of those eggs, they're successful. If two of
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: those eggs turned into turnley, if that, yeah, like you're successful. Yeah,
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: over the lifetime, not per um. Yeah, So salmon comes
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: up and drops how many hundreds of eggs, it's successful
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: if two or roughly one or two live. Yeah. Yeah,
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: it's common strategy in nature. I mean you even see
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: it in just our our prey populations. You know that
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: you're having way more babies in the lank and support.
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: So yeah. Yeah. We had a guy we interviewed on
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: here one time that had a he had a black
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: bear saw that he watched during his research project that
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: he watched um rear ten cubs two hundred pound size,
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: back to back to back. Quinn is a quintuplet, five
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: m back to back quintuplets. That's impressive that she got
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: all ten to one hundred pounds at least. And at
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: that point there they're rocking successful. Yeah, well we got
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: into that. She was onto a lot of crop land.
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: It was onto the place where they dumped road killed. Yeah.
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: Well yeah. The bear's name is the Wisconsin supersow. So
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: you did the turtle thing, then what happened? So, um,
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: let's see. I did a couple of bird projects one
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: of the smokies. That was fun, doing some misnetting and
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: looking for nests. What kind of birds? Um, we were
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: looking for junk on nests. They're just a comment. Yeah yeah, sparrow.
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: I got those in my yard right now. Yeah yeah yeah.
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: And the reason we were looking for those is we
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: were collecting eggs, so it needed to be a common bird.
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: And I was working for a PhD student who was
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: looking at um environmental leeching. So from all the pollution,
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: UM wondering, is calcium leaching out of the environment enough
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: that it's affecting eggshells? Why is there? Why is there
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: calcium in the environment? Just natural calcium in the environment,
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: that's the good part that's spread the birds need from
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: eating snails and whatever, um, and then needed for making shells.
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: So being leached out by pollution by pollution, yeah yeah,
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: because when you know what they used to use DDT
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: it would cause the birds shells to be too soft.
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: So the one the birds incubating. Do you know what
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: it was? Was that a calcium issue? I don't know.
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: I don't know why it caused their shells to get thin. Yeah,
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: I don't know, I don't know. But so that was
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: a great job, just basically wandering around the smoky's usually
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: by myself, hiking around um looking for the eggs, looking
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: for nest. Yeah, how would you find? You just get
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: They like to nest on the ground in cut banks
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: a lot. So you just hiking trails, You just watch
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: for birds flashing, and you just are looking to see
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: the little nest tucked in there. Yeah. You know that
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: Tom Petty song where he says I can track a stink.
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: I can track a single bee to its high That
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: saw the people like hunt bee hives and the old days.
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: You just sit out in the woods and watch a
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: honeybee fly by, Watch it go as far as you
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: could see it. Stand there, wait for honeybee to fly by,
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: watch until it disappears out of your line of sight.
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: Stand there, and over time I got a friend you
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: to do it. Sometimes to take him a couple of
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: days of just whenever he would have time, and he
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: would just go to his last position and wait for
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: one to go by, and eventually you'd locate the honey
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: bee hole. Yeah. Yeah, so I started the same deal.
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: But we wait for them to flash you sometimes. I
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: don't know. I don't know the Tom Petty Cannon fact tracks,
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: but he made that claim. Yeah, how many would you find?
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: Was it a good day a bird? Oh? No, more
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: than that. Yeah, you'd be finding there's tons of juncles
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: there you'd find. I don't know, I don't remember. Probably
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: four or five might be a good day, just working
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: by yourself. Yeah, So, how like when you do these
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: jobs like we're gonna get to we're gonna talk about
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: a bunch of but how many jobs like this? If
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: you had coming into work on a research project that
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: involved you run around out in the woods, that's what
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: they've all been. I don't know how many jobs I've done,
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: doesn't Yeah? Maybe almost? How are they described? Um, there's
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: a big the Texas A and M has a wildlife
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: program and they have just an online job board that's
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: kind of the go to for a lot of people.
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: You just start cruising the job board and you find
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: a job. Then you're like, the that's in a cool place,
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: and i'd be doing something cool. I'm interested in that.
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: And you apply and and the more you do then
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: the better your resume is, right, Yeah, and so I was.
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: But as the goal to wind up, like do you
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: have a goal you'll do? You want to keep doing this?
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: You have a goal you'll wind up like at a
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: fixed position. Yeah. See, that's something I agonize over because
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: I love being in the field. I love doing what
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: I do, and I I would I'm dreading the day
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: when that my typical day involves a lot more office work,
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: which it will when I some day get a permanent job,
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: which is I would only do because you know you're
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: going to make more money and it's just more stable.
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: And there's certain fields I think that do that. Yeah.
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: And the higher up you go in the field, the
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: less you're in the field. And I got friends like
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: in the military too, man, Like they train up to
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: learn how to do all this like badass stuff, and
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: like you do well at it, and eventually what that
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: means is you stopped doing it because for soon you
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: have a desk. Yeah, exactly. I cling to the hope
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: that your job is some what you make of it.
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: And so, UM, if I can get a job where
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: I'm doing some office stuff and maybe you know, getting
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: to um think of research projects and actually be managing
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: research projects, but balance out with some field work, that'd
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: be good. That'd be ideal. UM doing carnivore stuff, that
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: would be good. But I've been having a lot of
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: fun doing this, and I've been fortunate enough to be
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: able to um for a lot of this time before
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: I kind of settled down in eastern Washington, to be
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: able to just kind of travel all over, which really
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: opens up the number of jobs you can apply for
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: obviously if you're free to just go and live wherever
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: for a season. How many years ago was it that
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: you did, like the junk thing in the Hawaii thing.
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: Let's see, I started school in two thousand two Hawaii,
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: was I guess two thou four? Yeah? Yeah, And then
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: what'd you go on to do after? Because you still
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: haven't done a carnivore job for tracking year my career. Yeah,
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: so like hunting bird eggs, hunting bird eggs, and I, UM,
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: I knew I want to do carnivore. I knew I
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: want to do wildlife stuff from when I was really little,
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: and then I started getting really interested in carnivores and
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: knew I wanted to do that, but I couldn't. I
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: don't know it didn't. I was applying for carnivore jobs,
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: but I think people were hesitant to hire a twentysomething
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: You're old girl who's going to go and trap bears.
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: I mean, I think I needed to prove myself a
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: little bit. So, UM, do you feel like there was
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: a you feel like it's an honest bias there. Yes,
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: I can constantly say that it's definitely, especially in the
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: carnival world, is it's definitely a boys club, and that's
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: um something I'm conscious of. But it's also I mean,
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: it's not like it's been a problem or something in
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: the field where I'm I feel like people are respectful
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: of my abilities and stuff. So have you overcome it now,
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: Like does your resume override? Like did you or there's
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: still some people like I don't care what I see
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: on this resume. It's a girl. I don't know if
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: people would not hire me because of that. Um, everybody
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: I worked with has been great, but there have been
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: people where it takes a little longer to gain their respect,
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: and I'm I have the feeling. I mean, it happens
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: enough and I see them interacting with other men on
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: the crew or whatever that I sense that it is
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: maybe just even a subconscious biased against what they think
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: I could do in the field. I had someone in
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: archaeology one time refer to the Bison boys, and I said,
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: what are the Bison boys? And she was saying, well,
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: in this field, that helps. If you're working on bison
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: and your boys. It's all about like, uh that and that,
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: Like in New World archaeology on the great you know, plains,
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: it's like the bois and boys, the bearer boys. Yeah,
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: And I think it's it's common with those field jobs
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: that are especially I don't know, more traditionally thought of
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: as I don't know if macho is the right word,
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: but you know, it involves trucks and knowing how to
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: get yourself unstuck when your truck stuff. It involves snowmobiles
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: and four wheelers and big animals that you're moving around
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: and traps. And I don't I mean, I don't blame
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: people because they are an examples out there of women
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: doing this a who lot, and so people I think
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: just look at me. The first thing they think, it's
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: probably not. I don't know, burly trapper biologists girls, you know.
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: So I don't know, but I can usually get people
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: past that and it works out. So yeah, so bird
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: collecting egg gathering. They ate one of those eggs, right, No,
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: I didn't. I was watching. I was watching it in
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: there with my kids. Man. It was they like to
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: watch stuff about the Arctic, and we were watching these
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: videos and these boys who just with like old shitty
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: three agents, three eights inch line repelled down cliff faces
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: to gather eggs. Yeah, they rigg up they got this
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: looks like crab hot rope, and they rig up a
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: harness and ship and they take the oldest, frailest, older
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: guy because he's real life, lower him down over that edge,
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: has some bitches garing those eggs up, and they're saying,
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: and this the narrators something baha is a common way
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: to die. This is in Siberia. I bet have you
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: seen that footage of collecting um nest for egg nest
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: soup and they're going down these rickety the middle scaffold systems.
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: I've tried to do that with. That's a swallow. Yeah,
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: one yeah, yeah, what is that family? Like they have
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: a saliva and they take stuff in their mouth and
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: they cold it with the slive, and the slive is sticky,
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: and they build their nests and then um, you boil
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: it down and you can extract that sticky saliva and
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: used the thicken soups. And I've taken you know those
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: kind of swallows that like build them under bridges the
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: mud the mud, Yeah, like a barn swallow or something. Yeah,
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: I've taken shiploads of those nests and boil them all
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: down and then and then skimmed off the you know,
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: let the mud settle, and then cooked it down. I've
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: never found that ship in there, whatever it is, like,
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: I've never isolated what it is that the sticky stuff,
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: because I wanted to make some of that soup, and
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: I figured that they don't reuse those, you know, those
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: dome nests. I figured you could probably break those up
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: without breaking any laws and now to get them under
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: urban bridges. But I could never get whatever they're after.
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: I don't know if it's like whatever they used to
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: make that mud sticky, don't know how they extract it
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: when they cook it. Well, that maybe the mud they
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: use is already sticking. They don't need any of their
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: own special I didn't do a whole hell of a
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: lot of research. I just I just jumped right into
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: it and might be delicious real quick before we get
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: off the birds. You called it miss netting. Yeah, eting,
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: So that's how you catch birds. Songbirds to put little
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: bands on their legs. So you set up these nets
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: that are just really fine. You can hardly see them
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: missed or miss missed. Oh, I said, yeah, they made
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: like missing them. I was like, that doesn't seem like
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: an effective way I'd be hit. I'd be hitting no
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: missed nets. So you set those up in the morning,
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: and they don't they don't, they don't break their bones
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: and ship they fly into them and they get tangled,
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: and so then you go out there and untangle them,
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: and then you can, you know, drop blood and measure things,
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: and you gotta have some mortality, right, there is some mortality, yeah,
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: but I don't think it's real great. Especially I think
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: the most dangerous part is getting them out of the net.
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: Is kind of a trick to learn how to do
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: that really delicately. But I got a body I don't
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: want to say his name. He works with ducks, and
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: his PhD advisor said, if you're not killing some ducks,
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: you're not working hard, meaning like gets you know, he
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: wanted them, he wanted them to get some data and
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: like if everything, if you're making all your decisions around
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: no mortality, you know. His feeling was, yeah, and that's
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: a balance. You work with mallards and things. I mean,
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: you work, you're not you know, it's like you're trying
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: to catch the last ivory build woodpecker, right yeah, um yeah,
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: So after birds, then I, um, I got into carnivores.
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: Finally I volunteered. So I spent volunteers. Yeah, I spent right,
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: I spent this summer just um trapping bears around where
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: I lived, helping out with trapping effort there. And then
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: that wasn't humble having bears and cleaning houses in California. Yeah,
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: clean the houses and take care of somebody's homestead, doing
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: their garden and stuff like that. So I'd cleaned some
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: days and then I go trap bears other days and
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: how are they what was what was going on with
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: the bears? How are they catching foot snares? No? So
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: there we were using just colvert traps so it's a bit.
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: It's a piece of covert usually blocked off on one end,
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: and at that end. For that job, we were using
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: um a sock. Stuff it full of dog food, dip
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: it in old nasty friar grease um, and then hang
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: some fish carcasses. So you hang that in the back.
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: I think they were like just salmon carcasses, UM stinky stuff.
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: Basically hang that in the back of the trap on
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: a chain that's connected to the like a guillotine door.
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: They go in, pull on it, door closes. You go
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: up to the trap and there's little hatches on the
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: sides that you can open up to stick. Jab stick
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: UM so lar a long pole with the hypodermic needle
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: on the end and instead of the plunger, you've got
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: the pole going into the um casing of the needle
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: or the um whatever that's called, the two that holds
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: the drugs the impact of you exactly. Yeah. So then
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: you um, somebody kind of distracts the bear. You're over
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: by the hole and you jab it in the butt.
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: Go sleep. You open the door and pull it out
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: and when you roll up. Usually it depends um, it
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: depends on their personality. And it depends on how carefully
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: you are about, you know, moving slowly and being quiet.
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: I like to, across species try and keep them as
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: calm as you can, just react better to the drug
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: and you just I mean, it's a stressful, awful experience
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: for them. I think, um, even when they're under with
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: a lot of the drugs, it's like I've had it
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: described as a really bad trip basically depending on the drugs.
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: So if you're making a lot of noise and jiggling
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: them around and stuff, I don't know, it just sounds awful.
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: So um, and there's complications that can happen if they
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: start getting stressed out while they're under. So anyway, sometimes
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: they're you know, popping their lips and banging around on
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: the trap, but sometimes they're calm. I think a lot
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: of that is just individual personality. But they gotta get
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: trapshy fro those cool word traps. That's funny. That's also
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: across species also. That can be kind of uh individual too,
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: because sometimes they've had animals get very trapped happy where
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: they like it's not that bad. I get to go
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: on the trap, I get a meal and then oh yeah,
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: because when I used to trap fox. You know, if
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: you pinched the toe on a fox and then get them,
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: they got mark about that ship. Yeah, canines are a
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: little different, and these are um, I mean traps with bait.
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: You know, that's where you'd have it happened more so.
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: We for example, we had a lynx that was always
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: getting in our traps. We'd already put a collar on him.
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: He'd always get in our traps and he'd figured out
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: that he could just ch a hole through the trap,
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: get out, go down the trapline. So for links on
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: back up from it. Okay, why are you guys catching
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: the bears? What were trying to figure out the bears?
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: This is on Timber Company land and they were having
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: a lot of problems with bears girdling the trees because
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: they eat them. Yeah, and so it kills the people
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: here struggle with that, like on the Limited Peninsula talk
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: about want doing bear control because of how much they
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: girdle and kill trees. Yeah, so they were trying to
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: figure out where they were going. We should explain girdling. Oh,
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: like you know, in the old days, we went out
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: to clear land. Like when you hear about you know,
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: pioneer type settlers when they would clear land, they would
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: generally go in to get your first crop, and they're
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: just going girdle the tree. So you cut through the
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: bark and through the cambium layer all the way around
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: the tree. Um. Think about like a girdle on someone's leg. Right,
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: you're just like cutting a ring around the tree and
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: then kill the tree. Yeah, and then you could, so
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: you would. You don't need it necessarily to start to
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: establish farmland or whatever. You didn't need to necessarily going
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: and log the thing off. You can just girdle everything first.
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: That lets sunlight through and you can start growing crops,
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: and at your leisure you can go in and cut
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: the tree down. So people will talk about girdling a
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: tree to kill it, just doing that to it. And
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: bears are just doing that because they're just eating. Yeah,
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: they're eating the cambium land which is right under the bark,
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: and so they're eating out. So they're stripping the bark
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: up um, and they'll go all the way around the
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: tree or probably just strip it far enough up that
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: it can kill and damage. Yeah. Yeah, conifers. So they
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: were um every time yearly hitting the trees. Oh I
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: don't know, but there I think if I remember right,
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: I actually did my like senior thesis, uh, using some
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: of this information that we learned. But they liked to
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: hit the young, fast growing trees. I think if there's
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: more Cambium um and so in a you know, unlogging land,
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: that's a problem for them. But they were one of
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: the things they were hoping they might discover from the
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: callers that we were putting on them, um was were
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: they migrating in the fall two places for um acorns
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: where they could maybe direct hunters, so hopefully, Uh, the
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: goal was to maybe figure out how to target the
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: bears that were impacting there. So they were like trying
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: to do scouting for people. Basically, yeah, that's the kind
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: of roof church light. That's well and yeah, and I
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: don't know, I actually don't know what became of that.
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: They wanted to be like, where are these sons of
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: bitches in the fall during hunting season? Yeah, basically, yeah,
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: there's also a master there's dirty pool right there. There's
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: to get my hands on some of that. There were also, um,
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: there's a master's student on that project. I'm not sure
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: what she was using the data for. And then I
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: did like a habit a little habitat analysis with the
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: data that we got. But so then we'd go and um,
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: after we trapped, we went out and we do telemetry
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: to figure out where they were hanging out. Did you
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: ever mess up and get scratched up by a bear
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: when you're working a bear? No, I haven't had them
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: come up, come back to or something. No. That generally
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: happens pretty slowly. So they start lifting their head a
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: little and you can just you know, try and calm
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: them down. They have a you put a blindfold on
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: them to help keep them calm. You heard about that
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: story Montane, Right, some guy as are working up at
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: Grizzly and they were they're working it up. They were
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: relocating it or just working it up, but either way,
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: they put some signage out while they're working. Got all done.
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: The bear is still comb a toaster be still sedated.
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: They took down their signage. Some fellow who lives in
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: the area had seen him in there and wonder what
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: they were doing. Goes in there, bear wakes up, kills
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: that dude. Yeah, super unfortunate. Yeah. Yeah, So we after
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: on that project. After we worked up the bear, we'd
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: put it back in the trap and let it recover fully. Yeah,
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: and then we um could actually tie a rope, so
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: you don't put him out when he's vulnerable, right, And
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: we didn't want them like, I mean, they're they're drunk
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: seeming when they start to stumble off, So we didn't
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: want them walking down a logging road and you know,
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: get its wits about it. Oh, definitely, because they could
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: be killed by another bear or whatever. So yeah, so
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: we'd let him recover in the trap and then tie
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: a rope to the door, tie that to the truck
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: and open the the door that way and let him
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: run off. And when they come out, are they usually
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: just looking to get out of town. They want to
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: get away from probably probably get a little bit um
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: imagine like the vast majority of grizzlies are probably the
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: same way, But I think they'd be more inclined to
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: maybe come out and be like looking to a sign blame. Yeah,
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: be a little piste. Yeah, I'd be like, first, I'm
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: gonna take care of this. I'm gonna make this thing
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: not want to mess with me anymore. And like, yeah,
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: we got a friend, We had a friend saved mule
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: in your buck who got all hung up in some
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: ropes on a fence and once you got it cut
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: for you to tack. I have not had that happen yet.
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: So all right, what's up with the house cleaning? You're
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: working for a service or just running ads at that time,
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: and howmelt you could put your name on this just
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: kind of like pick up odd jobs sort of thing.
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: And so I put myself on that list for house
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: cleaning and like yard work and super around the people's houses.
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: Oh man, stuff. Yeah, you know their secrets, I imagine, man, Yeah,
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: if you probably don't really hide their secrets as well
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: as they think they do. Right, it's not all you
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: get to do any real snoop and right. And I'm
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: an annual cleaner, so I'm like deep cleaning, you know,
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: I'm dusting inside the drawers and stuff like that. Yeah. Yeah,
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: Actually I think I'm a good cleaner for the same
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: reason that uh, I do pretty well in biology. It's
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: attention to detail. There's some overlap there. Yeah. So then
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: so are you now like professionally as a field biologists.
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: Are you now you just can work or do you
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: stuck to do side jobs in the off season? Is
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: there a sason you call you guys talk about a
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: busy season. Why is there a busy season, Well, there's
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: I mean in summer, there's usually a lot of jobs
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: because that's when people can get out there easily. There
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: it's easier to collect data in the summer and then
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: but there's always jobs that are going on the winter
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: to just usually not as many. A lot of times
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: that's when projects take time to you know, do their
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: analysis or whatever. So the field portion is often in
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: the summer. But then there's jobs that are specific to
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: the winter, like snow tracking and trapping some species is
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: easier in the winter. Do you still have to do
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: odd jobs to fill in? I haven't done odd jobs
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: in a while, remember that being when I was when
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: I was coming up as a writer. Um, that'd be
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: a big moment. Well, I just could do what I
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: wanted to do, because I would do like trim trees
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: for you know, did arborst work when I finally got
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: or I didn't need to do arborist work. Now that
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: didn't like doing arborst work. But it was like a mile,
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: it was a milestone. It was a milestone, you know
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: what I mean, Just like now, it was like a leap, right,
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: It was like, now I'm just gonna do I'm just
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: gonna do this thing not have to worry about the
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: other thing. It feels good, but it's still gonna be
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: like it's gonna be hard to make a living, right
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: when you're jumping from job job job, and they're not
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: paying you know, it's all like entry level. Yeah, yeah,
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: that's probably people get out of it as much fun
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: as you're having. Eventually you're like I just can't like yeah, yeah,
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: dread when I get bills and stuff. Well, and then
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: you have that conundrum of like what you're saying, like
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: you make the money and all of a sudden you're
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: not in the field anymore. Yeah. But yeah, I think
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: that that you have people when you're younger, you have
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: a tolerance for uncertainty fades if I'm any, If I'm
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: any example, like I used to be very comfortable with uncertainty.
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: It didn't bollow me at all. It bought me a
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: little bit. By me like I kind of like half
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: lived in my one brother's basement, half lived in my
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: other brother's spare bedroom. Yeah, right, and it is it
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: was just like okay, this is how it is. Yeah,
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: and I um, I didn't have a whole lot. I mean,
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: it's not like I had a bunch of bills. I
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: just it felt good to know that I could fit
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: everything in my car and go and work wherever. Yeah,
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: I went for years and nothing but a cell phone.
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: Billy was the only thing my name was. Yeah, I
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: didn't even have that for a long time. Um, And
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: then I also, yeah I did. I mean I'd do
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: some odd jobs if I couldn't find a winner job
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: or whatever. I did baking a lot baking. Yeah, I
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: had a bakery. I could always go back to come
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: crawling back. Yeah, make some cinimon wrong. You know really
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: in the annal it makes you just such a whole person,
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: you know what I mean. Think about if you hadn't
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: done all these odd jobs, you know how different of
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: a person you'd be now. But like these skills in
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: baking and like, I'm sure you're a very clean organized house. Like, oh,
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: it's totally and their thing about it. And I get
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: into this all the time with people who, yeah, I
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: guess like now that I'm my age or whatever, I've
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: come to the weird point in life where I find
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: myself getting out depensing. Yeah, like I like give advice
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: now you know what I mean. And I have like
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: four pieces of advice I give the people, and one
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: of them is like, develop your humility, man, do you
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: know what I mean? Yeah, because a lot of people
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: don't have it, and I feel like, yeah, I could
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: say it really old man type thing. Now start talking
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: about kids these days, but I'll spare you that. But
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: I find the people I admire and the people who
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: do something new and find success in something new. We're
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: not where they have like family lineage propelling them along,
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: you know, but like you're like you know our you know,
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: like my like my parents didn't go to college, you know. Um,
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: so when we went into professional lives, we're sort of
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: going in a new direction. I think. To go and
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: do that, you gotta have. You gotta like be able
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: to to just like do sucky jobs well, because that's
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: the quickest way out. The quickest way out of a
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: sucky job is to kick ass at it. If you
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: don't kick ass at it, you'll always have sucky jobs.
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: Because people were like be like that dude, couldn't even
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: do the sucky job. You know. I'm not going to
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: give them the important one. But like humility, Yeah, I
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: have scrubbed a lot of toilets and that that's a
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: quick wait to humility. Yeah. I remember when I was
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: in graduate school, I had a job cleaning the bathrooms
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: in the l A Building, the Liberal Arts Building, and
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: like I was in a very prestigious graduate program, it
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: was very difficult to get in. And I would and
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: like my classmates would be coming out of writing workshops
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: and going to take a leak while I'm in there
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: scrubbing the toilets, right, And that ship hurts, man, it hurts,
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: but it's like it does something to your head and
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: it makes you like different, you know, it gives you something.
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: Uh well, it gives you just on top about like
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: a level of humility. Yeah, the you know, the familiar
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: sting man, you know, gives you a girl and grit.
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: I remember sitting there with you on us one day
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: in Bozeman and were scrubbing toilets. We're actually pulling off
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: a coffee shop and we see a guy like a
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: drift boat go buy on a trailer, like very obviously,
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: you know, like a young guy driving a boat on
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: a morning and like clearly that dude is a guide.
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: And Yana said, oh, you know that brings back memories,
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: and I thought he was gonna get on nostalgic. It
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: was like floating at same fucking stretch of river every day.
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: Bo I later found out after we talked with that
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: photographer that was with us on that trip, he got it,
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: you know, and he said something like, within an hour's drive,
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: they have like two hundred miles of floatable river where
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: we had I don't know, maybe a quarter of that.
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: You know, maybe he didn't have the same beat up
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: feelings that I did about it, but yeah, alright, So
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: after bears, so after that job, and that was volunteering,
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that's I mean, you gotta have balls to
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: put up a job listing that you're not gonna pay.
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: That's a lot of wildlife tech work, especially fun carnivore
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: jobs that are super competitive. They're like, people are gonna
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: want to do this, People are gonna want to do this.
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: People need to get their toe in the door. They
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: need to get experience. And our project has no money.
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: Let's get volunteers. You probably get w p A volunteers.
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: But it's like then he can't even yell at. I'm
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: sure you got yelled at as a volunteer, right, you
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: know what. Everybody was so appreciative they were Yeah. I
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: mean so my next job was right after I graduated,
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: and I spent the summer in Alberta in the mountains
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: there on a cougar kill site analysis. There you go,
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: that's good stuff. Was that paid? Uh? It was very little.
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: It was stipe. That's the other thing is a lot
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: of these places you get you get a stipend, so
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: your basic glee. You're not spending money because you're in
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: the middle of nowhere. They give you housing and stipend
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: and you're camping out. No, well we had like four
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: service housing. Yeah, so bunk house they were. It was
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: killside analysis. So this project he um, he was looking
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: at pray composition. So what the cougars they were eating
• 52:25
  Speaker 1: and kill? Right, so how often they were killing? Um?
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: So you got collars on collars on the cougars and
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: these were GPS collars, So these collars would take a
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: location and store it in the collar. Did he already
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: have the collars when you joined up? That was a
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: wintertime thing. They use hounds in the winter to call
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: it them. Yeah, so run the cougar down on the
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: hound darted out of the tree, that's something I wanted
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: when you dart. My boy asked this question last night
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: after he was talking to you. When you dart the
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: cougar up in the tree, how do you keep it
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: from getting injured on the fall? I this is how
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: he did it and describe it to me, is that
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: he would go up there before it was so out
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: that it just fell and help help it down. Yeah,
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: because it seems like they'd be in some positions where
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: you couldn't dart. Him. Boy, that's got to be intimate
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: with a big cat, just not quite out and yeah,
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: let me help you out of the street. Yeah. Yeah,
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: you're kind of stuck. You don't have a lot of
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: room to maneuver. Yeah. I'll tell you a horrible story.
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: I was working on a magazine article in Nevada one
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: time and I got to hanging out with this dude
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: who um had been a mule deer and lion guide.
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: So he's a he's an outfitter. He had long long
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: sinceince he got out of the business. He we could
• 53:46
  Speaker 1: looking through photo album and he's got pictures of him
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: up in a tree with lions with a jabstick. Okay,
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: so the same setup your top boat. He explains me
• 53:55
  Speaker 1: that when he was a lion guy, he would find
• 53:58
  Speaker 1: the clients only has so much appetite for running lions,
• 54:01
  Speaker 1: because it's hard work. He would keep a couple. He
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: would go out in the off season trank lions. This
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: you're gonna think I'm bullshitting. He took me and showed
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: me the cages on his property. He would trank lions.
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: Is highly illegal. He would trank lions keeping in cages,
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: feed him dear meat. When he had a client that
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: couldn't hack it, he'd let one of those out and
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: then he run that one. Yeah, you talk about dirty pool. No,
• 54:33
  Speaker 1: it's awful. You want to punch the guy in the nose, right,
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: But I mean he's talking about like something from way
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: back in his mind. You know, clients never knew, I
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: mean he should. The weird thing is, yeah, he's got
• 54:46
  Speaker 1: a photo albums, like big blown up photos. Just he
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: was like he wasn't, you know, hiding and he was
• 54:53
  Speaker 1: hiding it from them. But he's like, oh, yeah, here's me,
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: and that's where I used to put him. I'm not shipping.
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: Just he was an old fellow. I'd be surprised he's
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: still alive right now. But you know he's talking about whatever.
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: I know if this is something he's doing the fifties
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: or sixties. Yeah, but you know, if there's a moral
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: to that story, it'sford do your research on your guide. Yeah,
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: I mean you'd hope that that stuff is harder to
• 55:21
  Speaker 1: get away with. This fellow has some collars on some lives. Yeah, so,
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: um so we would. So these GPS collars, they are
• 55:33
  Speaker 1: taking locations. Um. I think his were set to every
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: two hours. She's getting pretty detailed location data from these
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: animals stored on the collar. The collar also has a
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: traditional radio transmitter, so it's making the beep if you've
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: got your little antenna in case the GPS fails or something. Um,
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: just so you can locate them because collars, Yeah, you
• 55:54
  Speaker 1: have to find the cat again, get close enough that
• 55:58
  Speaker 1: with a special antenna. Uh, you can suck the data
• 56:02
  Speaker 1: off the cat's collar. Depending on the topography and everything.
• 56:08
  Speaker 1: I don't know, eighty meters maybe close, sometimes further if
• 56:13
  Speaker 1: it was a good strong collar. So you gotta find
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: the lion all bedded up somewhere. Yeah, hopefully they're not
• 56:19
  Speaker 1: moving or you're running to catch up with them. You
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: track in on the line yeah, never saw one doing that.
• 56:27
  Speaker 1: I heard one, but I never saw one doing that,
• 56:30
  Speaker 1: just because it's thick and they're good at hiding and
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: the rocks usually you're down the forest. Yeah, it was
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: a lot of well, there were some. There was We
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: had one, uh, mountain cat. She was way up high.
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: She was lying in the mountain. Yeah, lying in the mountains.
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: So she lived. Her territory was um way up in
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: the Rockies and she was you know, eating mountain goats
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: and big horn sheep and stuff. Um, so she was Yeah,
• 56:59
  Speaker 1: so she wasn't a lot of open you know, cliffy country.
• 57:02
  Speaker 1: But then we had cats that were just down in
• 57:05
  Speaker 1: the in the more boreal forest. So it was really thick.
• 57:08
  Speaker 1: And then there was one kind of town cat that
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: lived sort of near to um Rocky Mountain house, the
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: town that was nearby. And so that cat was you
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: know in farmland. But also timbers at or where would
• 57:25
  Speaker 1: you find it. Just some timber stands all over. I
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: mean they're timber stands, yeah, I mean they I don't
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: I don't know that they'd be betting down in a
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: grassy area. I don't know. We weren't, I mean we weren't.
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: We were going to kill sites. So we just it
• 57:40
  Speaker 1: would be every you would be able to find the
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: kill site without downloading where it had been. Right, but
• 57:44
  Speaker 1: you do that every month or two sort of opportunistically
• 57:47
  Speaker 1: as you heard them, you know, oh I got you. Yeah,
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: so you get a whole pile of data all at
• 57:52
  Speaker 1: once and then so so you'd go find it, download
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: the stuff and you didn't have to do that regularly
• 57:56
  Speaker 1: once and then you'd have all those GPS way points
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: and you analyze those to make sense of where it
• 58:01
  Speaker 1: might have killed something. Yeah. So he how would you
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: know by looking at the way points just it lingered
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: in an area? Yeah, So he had developed an algorithm
• 58:08
  Speaker 1: that would go through the points and um pull out
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: places where the cat had spent enough hours within a
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: small enough radius. So it was like a two intermter.
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: The cat had stayed within a UM you know, two
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: day period, had been had main locations within a two
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: radius or something um for enough hours so they could
• 58:34
  Speaker 1: they could leave. But if they came back, you know,
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: more than two or three times, it would make what
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: they call it cluster well cluster points. So it's basically
• 58:42
  Speaker 1: saying this cat hung out here consistently for you know,
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: more than just a couple of hours. So then our
• 58:49
  Speaker 1: job was to, um, go out to those spots get
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: there however we could. We did a lot of uh formilling,
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: a lot of backpacking in especially for the mound cat,
• 59:01
  Speaker 1: and then you just plug it into your GPS and
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: navigate out there. And then you'd get to the area
• 59:07
  Speaker 1: where the cat had been hanging out and you just
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: start searching and searching and searching to see if there
• 59:13
  Speaker 1: was a kill there. Oftentimes it was just a betting
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: site and you could you know, find a little bed
• 59:17
  Speaker 1: under a tree or whatever, but um, a lot of
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: times it was killed, and so then you'd This is
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: where I started getting really into tracking. I've been interested
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: in tracking before this, and you know, learned a lot
• 59:29
  Speaker 1: in school and just on my own, but um, it's
• 59:33
  Speaker 1: really cool to go to a spot where our predator
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: has been recently and left a lot of sign and
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: you're trying to figure out, you know, sometimes from just
• 59:41
  Speaker 1: tiny bone fragments and hair what it was they ate
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: who else was there, scavenging what went on there, So
• 59:48
  Speaker 1: that that method you would miss all the small stuff
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: the cat killed, right yep. Yeah, So so you're not
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: gonna find like fox turtles. I mean all the garbage
• 59:59
  Speaker 1: they pick up. You're only gonna find a stuff where
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: he had us like a substantial amount of meat underground, right,
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 1: cats with cats, I feel like we were finding some
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 1: We were finding some smaller stuff. They'd often when they
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: have a kill, they eat and they stay there. Um,
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 1: whereas with say wolves, they tend to eat for a
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: little bit and then go bed down or just go
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: on their way if they've eaten it all. So I
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 1: don't know, it felt it would hang out. Yeah for
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: some I mean mice and little stuff. You're right, you're
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 1: not catching that stuff, but you're getting the bigger prey.
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 1: Would you ever go in and find like a bunch
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 1: of blue grouse feathers? I can think of that happening
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: one time and that was all we found. But that
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: you find blue grouse feathers all the time, you know, Right,
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: So what was the main what were the main things
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: you were You were locating elk dear what elk deer
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 1: during the during the spring, with a lot of you know, calves, moose, calves, calves, caves. Yeah,
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 1: so we'd find moose, porcupines, beavers. They love to beavers.
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 1: They would linger on a beaver carcass. Yeah, we found
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: a lot of beavers, I guess. Yeah, because if you
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 1: got a cat's hunter pounds and he kills a forty
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: pound beaver, yeah, I mean he's gonna hang out. It's
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: like he's gonna drag it off. I mean, I could
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: drag it too far. Yeah, uh, and then it would
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: be hitting when when they're hitting the beavers, you managed
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: to probably catch them when they're up out of the
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 1: water working on cutting willows and stuff. Probably. I also
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 1: imagined because there's I remember in a lot of spots,
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: it would be like a wet meadow with just a
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: deep trench that the beavers have made. But it's it's
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: you know, not the channels, Yeah, plugging them out of there.
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know, I never saw that happen
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 1: or anything, but it's easy to imagine a cat just
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 1: waiting for one to swim behind. Yeah. You know, you know,
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: I've I've hand grabbed. You can hand grab beavers on
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 1: dry land. Yeah, you get between them and the water.
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 1: There's nothing yeah they can do. Yeah. Yeah, you know,
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 1: we just we've just hurt back when we were of
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 1: the age that you would her ass animals that you
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 1: found out in the woods. We would her ask beaver
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 1: as if we caught them on dry land now and
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 1: then yeah, yeah, so, yeah, they ate a lot of beavers.
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 1: There was one that ate porcupines a lot. And then
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 1: what would you find on the you find? Would would
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: that skin be pretty intact on the porcupine where they
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 1: kind of pull that porcupine right out of the skin,
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 1: where they shred that skin and all you'll find maybe
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 1: a piece of it, but there'd be you know, a
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 1: pile of quails. Maybe yeah, a piece of the back
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 1: with clothes on it. Or did you ever get the
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 1: sense they ate it and then passed the quills or
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: they get the meat out. No, I never had the
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: sense they ate the quills. Yeah, like you go to
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 1: a griz where a grizzly bear has something, they'll run
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 1: the whole damn thing through their system, where all the bone,
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 1: all the hair. Sometimes you'll find all the bone, all
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 1: the hair and dropping form. Have you found porcupine cliothes? Though?
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 1: Never Yeah, that might not be good. Yeah, I managed
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 1: be awful. We found my body. We were hunting in
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 1: southeast Montana and he shot a mule deer and uh,
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 1: it was just nasty because she must have the only thing.
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 1: I think she ran over a porcupine an accident. How
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: does the deer get her entire bottom coded and drills?
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 1: I feel like she's going along and happened to get
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 1: over one man. She was full of infections. Also, it
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: was disgusting. Yeah, like messed up, like to the point
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: where it could have like long term fatal Yeah, probably
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 1: you know from all that just full of quills on
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: her belly and around her memories. Yeah real, all it's green.
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 1: We cleaned it up, and we cleaned up and got
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: most of meat off it. But I remember thinking it
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 1: was like a deer killed, like would have become a
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 1: deer killed by a porcupine. Yeah. So the other fun
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 1: thing about those kill sites is that on multiple occasions
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 1: we would find where they had been eating their deer
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 1: and moose or whatever, and another animal will come along
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 1: to scavenge, and they just opportunistically swipe that animal and
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 1: added to them. Really like what I've had a bobcat once,
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 1: fisher um. I think somebody might have even found a
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 1: lynx once that he had to kill and it was
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 1: like sleeping or upen a tree or whatever around comes
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 1: some other thing to get in there and kills it
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 1: and then eats it. Yeah, they're opportunistic. We would find
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 1: double kills two deer in one cash. Yeah. I got
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 1: a buddy that was running lions, and they had a
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 1: lion get up in a tree on a rock pile,
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 1: and it was dark by the time they got there,
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 1: and they couldn't get up on the rock pile, and
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 1: there were and there was a dog up on that
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 1: rock pile. They couldn't get back, so they left and
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: came back at first light. No lion, but it eating dogs. Yeah.
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 1: The lion came down out of the tree, eighth dog
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: and took off. Yeah. Yeah. From what I've learned about
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 1: hunting the pounds that you don't want to get your hounds,
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 1: any of them isolated, because the pack, though, you know,
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 1: run away from but they know they can take the
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 1: single The single animal I had have been a satisfying
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 1: meal a bit. Yeah, No, I got you load. Yeah yeah.
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 1: Would they would you find the animals that the lions
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 1: killed tucked up and and buried, like were they bury
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 1: a beaver or they just eat the beaver, not car
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 1: they cash a fawn. So sometimes what fighting funds is
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 1: really hard because a lot of times it's just some
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 1: tufts of hair and maybe one little hoof or one
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 1: little bit they scratched the cover up. Yeah, they're real
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 1: anal about that, so they'll scratch around it. And then
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 1: with a deer or something especially there it was you know,
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 1: real mossy if we were in the forested areas, and
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 1: so they just haul moss from all around and make
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 1: a huge pile. Oh yeah. Were they pretty fastidious about
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 1: eating the whole thing or they often leave a lot
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 1: of meat or what does a cat like like to
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 1: eat his kill right down a bone? That's something I'm
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 1: really interested just in general with with predators because I
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 1: think there's a lot more scavenging than than we think
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 1: about going on so for um like other stuff, eating
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 1: those coming in and eating so after the fact, right
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 1: And with cats, I think it probably happens less because
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 1: they tend to stick close. Um, but I'm sure they
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 1: you know, could get chased off of a kill. I
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 1: definitely went to some that were just like there's a
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 1: huge rotting maggot pile here for whatever reason, didn't get
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 1: to finish it. But typically we were finding um, you know,
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 1: the room and contents they don't like that. They take
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 1: that out first drag they eat the stomach or the
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 1: lion not like to eat the stomach. They don't like
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 1: the room and contents. They'll eat organs and stuffy. But
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 1: I mean because you always see it looks like someone
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 1: dumped out a bag of grass clippings out of the
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 1: lawn more because they eat the actual stomach, but leave
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 1: that sack as the Yeah. I also sometimes you just
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 1: find that because they've just kind of taken out the
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 1: whole thing. Um, so they almost almost yeah yeah, m
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 1: eat the soft yeah yeah, that's really nutritious stuff that
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 1: tends to go first with kills. In fact, with wolves,
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 1: you can tell you can kind of get a timeline
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 1: from the scats um. So like the early scats from
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 1: the first feedings on a kill will be these like
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 1: black nasty I call them organ scats because they've been
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 1: eating just the organs and pure met And then as
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 1: they eat those things up and they start eating cracking
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 1: more bones and eating hair, more of the hair and
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 1: hide and stuff, you get those more and you can
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 1: also learn a little bit about who maybe left that
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 1: scat because the breeding male and female get first pick
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 1: generally until they're eating the organs' oh wolve that So
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 1: I'm jumping around side my buddy, uh Rammy just was
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 1: showing me some photographs. He was out hunting elk and
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 1: found where some lions. Those two lions had killed. Would
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 1: you remember they killed? They killed elker deer. I don't
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 1: remember what it was. And he's got all these pictures
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 1: of them up in a tree because the wolves rolled
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 1: in and the lions just ran up on a couple
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 1: of leaning lean trees. You know, this load took a nap. Yeah,
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 1: they're like like it now, naps waiting for the wolves
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 1: to leave because there's nothing they're gonna do about it,
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 1: you know, stayed up in the tree, right. Yeah. I
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 1: actually went to a wolf kill site that had It
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 1: was hard to tell what had happened because it was
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 1: an old kill site that the wolf I was following
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 1: had returned to, but it looked to me like she'd
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 1: they'd killed a deer. I think it's what it was.
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 1: And then I also found where they had been where
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 1: they killed a mountain lion and she had gone back
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 1: and was renowning on those bones. The wolves killed the lion,
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 1: So I mean, I don't you never know exactly what happened,
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 1: but but the lion's carcass was close to the deer. Yeah,
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 1: so they might have rolled up, got a tussle over
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 1: the deer and killed the lion and eighth the lion. Mhm.
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 1: It's a good way to get trick analysis. Yeah, that's
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 1: all that happens. Yeah, So but anyway, just mainly the
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 1: point there is that when you're looking at predation rates
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 1: and you know how often predators are killing prey, you
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 1: gotta kind of think about and remember that it's probably
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 1: not just that that predator of that prac that pack
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: that's eating it. A lot of times, there's bears coming in,
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 1: there's you know, food for a lot of stuff. We
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 1: got a friend, uh fella, we talked to you that
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 1: he was doing they were doing mortality. They were investigating
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 1: mortality of collard caribou and they had a caribou wearing
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 1: a collar. Gotta you know the death you know, the
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 1: mortality signal had been hit by a car, eaten by wolves,
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 1: eaten by a bear. Yeah. There's a lot of sharing
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 1: going yeah, definitely. Yeah, And so that's one of the
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 1: things that makes kill site analysis fun is it's not
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 1: always just a straightforward Oh the cat was here, so
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 1: it ate it all up. You know, you don't know,
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 1: is this a scavenge situation with the cats? That's less
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 1: common just because they like fresh meat. But um, like
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 1: what percent of a wolverine? Like what percent of a
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 1: wolverines diet? Did he not kill himself? It's got to
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 1: be enormal. Oh yeah, that's I think one of their
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 1: main things is scavenging, avalanche slides, other kills. So now
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 1: the last thing about the lion, that lion job. What
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 1: were they trying to find out? What are they eating?
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 1: What are they eating? And what's the kill rate? Yeah,
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 1: what's that mean? Kills? What do you find or what
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 1: they find they've I'm not gonna be able to remember
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 1: off the top of my head. But as far as
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 1: prayer composition, it's you know, it's very but it all so,
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 1: I mean, predator populations and eating habitats are eating habits
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 1: in general are really kind of controlled from the bottom up.
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 1: So what's available? You know. Um, something that I've come
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 1: to realize just from being out there and from you know,
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 1: reading the literature, is that a lot of times it's
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 1: the reverse of what people think. It's more the the
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 1: prey population controlling the predator population um, which is kind
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 1: of relieves some of the fears that people have of
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 1: you know, these predators are going to come in and
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 1: you know, decimate this dear population or whatever. That's the thing.
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 1: That's the thing I struggle explain to people oftentimes when
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 1: when they're when they're um, when people get a little
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 1: bit too hysterical about the predator threat, is um. You know,
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 1: predators have Really it doesn't really make sense mathematically for
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 1: predator to annihilate its resource because that spells real bad
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 1: things for the predators. They can something up and then
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 1: move on to something else, you know, for sure, Like
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 1: we got our body in Kentucky, was he was saying it.
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 1: When coyotes came in, He felt that the first thing
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 1: they did was they worked groundhogs. And he said that
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 1: was like the one thing you saw that just vanished
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 1: from the landscape was groundhogs. It was like he said
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 1: that he felt just anecdotal personal observation, but he felt
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 1: that they went from having shiploads of groundhogs and then
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 1: they had no brown hogs, and then they went on
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 1: to other things and established a viable population. But he
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 1: felt that that was a case where it was just
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 1: they were gone, yeah, and then did they did you
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 1: feel like they switched to something? Yeah, and then now
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 1: they got you know, shiploads guy oots and he all
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 1: kinds of stuff. But he felt the one thing that
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 1: he saw just vanish was it must have been this
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 1: easy pick kinds and something they really dedicated a lot
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 1: of time to and and that was what they've done. Yeah.
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 1: It's the other thing that I've learned is that trying
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 1: to pinpoint the relationship between prey and predator populations is
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 1: really complicated. It's um, it's tempting to say, you know,
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 1: this population of deer is doing really badly because X
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 1: predator is on the rise, or you know, because they
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 1: gave out way too many tags or whatever. It's it's
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 1: easy to try and pinning on one thing, but in reality,
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 1: there are usually a lot of factors going on and
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 1: working together. And um, I think the climate is under
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 1: appreciated for its influence on prey populations, you know, a
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 1: bad winner or a drought or whatever, and and predators
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 1: are often um over appreciated for theirs. It's it's hard
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 1: to find a situation where I mean it happens especially
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 1: in situations where populations are already not doing well. Um,
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 1: but it's it's not often that you see this population
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 1: of prey is doing badly and it's because of this
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 1: predator population. But yeah, I think that it becomes most
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 1: pronounced when you get to those vulnerable spots like for instance,
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 1: the cab the caribou guy we talked with, he's dealing
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 1: with with a dozen animals, which is a population that
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 1: is going to have It's a huge deal for us,
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 1: you know, like losing one new predator is a huge deal.
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 1: Losing one anything, losing one to get hit by a
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 1: car vehicle, mortality on white tail deer isn't really making
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 1: anybody worried. But when you've got a dozen of something,
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 1: it's a big deal. Or you have a drainage that
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 1: has a population of maybe six or seven breeding female moose, Yeah,
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 1: predation becomes an issue because you got six or seven well,
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 1: and everything becomes into yeah, everything. You can't just point
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 1: it at the predators and it's habitat and um and
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 1: climb our they're usually big. It's hard to isolate all
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 1: those different factors for the research so that you can
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 1: say if it's another but that's what um our buddy
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 1: bil Andre is talking about the warden from Colorado. Have
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 1: you heard about the researcher doing in the Piance Basin
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 1: in Colorado with the with the predator mule dear relationship.
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 1: They feel like they've got an isolated enough area and
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 1: a herd that's not doing well compared to other herds
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 1: around it, but it's isolated and they know that they've
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 1: got like what do you say, the habitat they know
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 1: can support the the fall. Yeah, they're they have they're
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 1: having great fawn the females, they test their pregnant with twins.
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 1: The fawns when they test them, the live fonds and
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 1: they test them are heavier than the last time they
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 1: are tested in the eighties, so they're well fed. But
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 1: they have just zero recruitment. So they feel like maybe
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 1: they're getting some very heavy predation right during that like
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 1: early stages of growth like in June July, and so
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 1: they're gonna try predator removable at those keys. You know
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 1: what they think is But one thing you're saying, too
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 1: was peculiar about the approach we're taking. As a lot
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 1: of times people do sort of this like generalized predator control.
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 1: But they're gonna do a very targeted predator control at
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 1: a very targeted time. So not like going out in
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 1: January February to catch cats that may or may not
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 1: be killing fawns in May and June, but to kill
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 1: cats in May and June to see if you know,
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 1: you never know if you're getting like the cat, but
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 1: like to see if what kind of movement that has
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 1: on it? Yea. Um but man, Yeah, predator control. It's
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 1: like such a thorny subject it is, and it's um.
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 1: I think it's slowly changing a little bit. I think
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 1: our traditional predator management is has been in the past
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 1: that there's a problem, we kill the predators. Um. But
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 1: I think that there are other ways and um that
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 1: that's slowly starting to be incorporated. Yeah, but I'm afraid
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 1: they're gonna throw out the baby with the bathwater. I mean,
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 1: I think the old days of you know, taking a
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 1: half dead animal and injecting it with strict nine and
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 1: then having that be your predator control program is you know,
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 1: those days are beyond us. But I think that also
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 1: there are times like this thing we're talking about, this
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 1: this piece of work that they're doing in Colorado or
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 1: the thing they're doing with mountain like the thing they're
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 1: not doing active predator control of the Mountain carripe, but
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 1: were they. It's like in cases, I think it's very valuable,
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 1: but everybody, you know, people want to be so binary.
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 1: It's like we had the early model which was used
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 1: poison to eradicate all predators, and and now to have
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 1: this like over correction that we're leading to now where
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 1: we want to be like, oh no, it's you know,
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 1: it's like this this tool we dacn't use because of
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 1: the you know, because of the public perception of it
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 1: and the pr obstacles in the way. It's just like
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 1: everything else. I think like predator control at times can
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 1: be a valuable tool. Does that mean I think we
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 1: should poison carcasses and kill everything that feeds on a
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 1: on a on a on a dead l No. Yeah,
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 1: I think that we don't want to limit the tools
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 1: we've got. But I my I don't know. My feeling
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 1: and what I've learned from just being around predator management
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 1: is that, um, we often come at it from look
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 1: at it with a certain framework of what we've always done,
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 1: which is there's a problem we control predator populations where um,
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 1: where I think we're missing in situations, that there are
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 1: other things that might actually be the problem, a more
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 1: underlying problem, um, and that there might be other ways
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 1: to solve it, that this is not a panacea. Yeah,
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 1: it's like it's like people, some people, some people, especially
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 1: on our end of things, like a lot of big
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 1: game huners, want to think that that's like the answer
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 1: to all problems. Right, Yeah, I think we're where it gaus,
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 1: we're with predator controls. When people act like it's a um,
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 1: you know, I think a lot of hunters, especially act
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 1: like it's like this panacea where they feel like it's
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 1: solved all problems. The predators are the root of all
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 1: evil when it comes to diminished game populations. I read
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 1: this paper not long ago. Was more like an internal
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 1: letter where a guy was there, there's a biologist news
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 1: explaining people's perceptions of the impact of wolves on elk
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 1: and you're saying, how we've always, you know, prior to
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 1: the re establishment of wolves, we've always lost thirty calves
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 1: per hundred two lions. And he said the wolves probably
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 1: added about ten calves per hundreds, but people were just
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 1: used to thirty. Like people had just become used to
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 1: the fact that you know, about sevent calves survived, and
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 1: they got used to like that was how we allocated
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 1: tags that people are used to seeing. And then you
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 1: had an additive effect of wolves and it wound up,
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 1: you know, it upset this sort of long standing system,
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 1: and it impacted the number of lk impacted the number
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 1: of tags, and people are like, oh, it's all wolves.
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 1: It was like, no, in fact, it's mostly lions. Wolves
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 1: are just a new additive to that. Yeah, you know,
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 1: but it's like people take a while. I get used
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 1: to it, but then they then I run into people
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 1: about wolves who almost want to make you believe that
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 1: wolves eat grass. By the way, they point out that
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 1: there's no you know what I mean, that they don't
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 1: do anything. I was like, well, these seven pounds of
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 1: me today, so it's coming from somewhere. Yeah. I mean,
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 1: they they're out there just doing their thing. But in
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 1: both directions. The the impact that they have I think
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 1: is overblown a lot. They're not, um, they're not necessarily
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 1: fixing everything, and um, they're also not ruining everything. I like,
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 1: I mean, I enjoy them being out there. I like
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 1: them being out there it's like I think that I
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 1: probably represent a pretty standard view of UM. I like
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 1: having all the native species on the ground. I like
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 1: having like, you know, an intact collection of large predators.
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 1: And I also like it when those large predators are
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 1: managed as a renewable resource where you have interest. So
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 1: that's just my personal take on I'm like the middle
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 1: of the road or yeah, I'm like, yeah, I would
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 1: never suggest eradicating them. But I also don't like that
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 1: the game we play where people have they're like favorite
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 1: animals and then they um want to act like certain
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 1: animals are off limits because they're like a calendar worthy species. Yeah. Yeah,
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 1: and that's all. That's tough thing to talk about two
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 1: because that hits some people's emotional attachment to different animals
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 1: and just kind of their own belief system. You know,
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 1: there's some animals that are just taboo for take you know, UM,
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 1: but I think we all we all have that that
• 1:23:23
  Speaker 1: threshold somewhere or you know, a lot of hunters I
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 1: think of I kind of think of a graph and
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 1: there's a lineup of animals on the X axis, and
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 1: like so for me, zero is mosquitoes, and then you know,
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 1: at the other I know the X axis. There's something
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 1: I would not want to kill, like my grandma or something,
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 1: and so and then there's this Yeah, two lines and
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 1: one is um, your desire to eat it hunted, UM
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 1: be a predator for some reason. And then there's another line,
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 1: UM that's just kind of your empathy or whatever. And
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 1: so you have this line that for me, I want
• 1:24:09
  Speaker 1: to kill mosquitoes. So I don't have empathy and I
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 1: have a high want. And then where those lines intersect,
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 1: where I've got um, the desire to kill something is
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 1: higher than my empathy, higher than UM, my desire to
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 1: just know they're there, that individuals there, um. And then
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 1: but there's also the point where I like knowing they're there,
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 1: and my empathy is so great that I have no
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 1: desire to kill them. Where is it fall for you? Um?
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 1: I I think empathy grows as you interact with animals
• 1:24:54
  Speaker 1: a lot. So for me, I don't know about that.
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 1: Well okay, well, okay, here I think bear. This is
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 1: where things are getting really great. For me, those lines
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 1: start to get really close. I would have a hard
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 1: time hunting a bear. I wouldn't I don't have a desire,
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 1: my desire to to eat it doesn't outweigh my desire
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 1: to just know they're there. I've also I have interacted
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 1: with so many bears. I've held their cubs and watched
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 1: them in their dens, and watched hours of you know,
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 1: trail camp footage of them, and so I just feel
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 1: too connected so that myself doesn't explain it. Why not
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 1: interaction doesn't explain it? Because think about how how much
• 1:25:42
  Speaker 1: have you interacted with elk? Yeah, thousands of hours held
• 1:25:48
  Speaker 1: their babies? Okay, but observation studying, right, Yeah, I think
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 1: in my case, in my case, interaction leads in the
• 1:26:00
  Speaker 1: other direction. There's some things where I feel like, uh,
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 1: like recently, we had a wolverine, right, get into a
• 1:26:10
  Speaker 1: wolf carcass in an area where you're allowed one wolverine
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 1: year hunting. It was the first wolverna I ever laid
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 1: eyes on. I was like, I'm not gonna kill the
• 1:26:19
  Speaker 1: first wolverine I ever laid eyes on. Right, That's the
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 1: thing that I was thinking about what people go to
• 1:26:24
  Speaker 1: Africa where it's kind of like, oh, that's what that
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 1: looks like. It's like I don't have any context with it, right'
• 1:26:31
  Speaker 1: I shoot the first wolverine I see Now, if I'd
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 1: been out and I glassed up a dozen wolverines over
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 1: the course of a couple of years, I start being like, yeah,
• 1:26:39
  Speaker 1: like I now have sort of earned my place at
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 1: the table. Ah. Yeah, that's just another measuring stick of like,
• 1:26:47
  Speaker 1: I don't know, I just feel like everybody's got their
• 1:26:48
  Speaker 1: own kind of complicated value and ethics around it and
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 1: that that plays into it. But there's mean, you shoot
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 1: a panda bear. No, I have no desire to do
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 1: That's what. Yeah, that's where I draw the line. He's
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 1: always having to be guiding. It seemed like a round
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 1: animal number ten of the fall, where like because early
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 1: on it's just like every client you're just like, I
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 1: want to kill an elk with you. I want to
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 1: kill an elk with you. Let's go, let's go, let's go.
• 1:27:16
  Speaker 1: And then when you've seen about ten of them hit
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 1: the dirt, all of a sudden, you're just kind of like, oh,
• 1:27:24
  Speaker 1: killing another one. Yeah, there's something so fresh for the
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 1: client though, yeah he's not he's not feeling that, you know.
• 1:27:31
  Speaker 1: I definitely felt like as a guide I would just
• 1:27:34
  Speaker 1: be like, oh, well, you know, yeah, if you don't
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 1: want to run after that one, we don't have to,
• 1:27:39
  Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, Yeah, so that empathy line is starting
• 1:27:43
  Speaker 1: above your desire to. Yeah, I have with I have
• 1:27:46
  Speaker 1: with wolves as much as I support UM, as much
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 1: as I support the right of state fishing game agencies
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 1: to manage wolves as they see fit, as much as
• 1:27:57
  Speaker 1: I support UM hunters who operating within the letter of
• 1:28:03
  Speaker 1: the law. They're like right to hunt as long as
• 1:28:06
  Speaker 1: their state game agency has determined that the population can
• 1:28:10
  Speaker 1: support harvest and it's all done within accordance to preserving
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 1: the long term viability of the species and all that stuff.
• 1:28:18
  Speaker 1: That's a long caveat right, UM. And I've purchased wolf tags,
• 1:28:24
  Speaker 1: but when I see a wolf, UM, I just don't, right,
• 1:28:31
  Speaker 1: don't feel desire. Uh. One time we were out and
• 1:28:36
  Speaker 1: I'd killed a doll ram and then my buddy got
• 1:28:39
  Speaker 1: a bear. And that night we had a you know,
• 1:28:42
  Speaker 1: white wolf come rolling down the river bank where we were,
• 1:28:47
  Speaker 1: And at that time I just was like, you know,
• 1:28:48
  Speaker 1: we just got a sheet, we got a bear. Two
• 1:28:51
  Speaker 1: days later, It's like, you know, that's a lot, But
• 1:28:56
  Speaker 1: there's always something hard. Time I was just hiking up
• 1:28:58
  Speaker 1: a river with my rifle. Wolf standing there could have
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 1: you know, shot the wolf, zero desire. I was staying.
• 1:29:07
  Speaker 1: I mean, I could have thrown a rock at it.
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 1: No desire, but in the back of my head, and
• 1:29:11
  Speaker 1: I was like, yeah at some point. But it's like
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 1: when it happens, I don't the when I like, you know,
• 1:29:17
  Speaker 1: you show me something like a doll ram, the minute
• 1:29:20
  Speaker 1: I see it, my desire to go after it goes
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 1: through the roof. Yeah. But the minute I see that,
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 1: you know, lay eyes on wolf, the desire doesn't climb
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 1: grizzly Bears. It's like a very gradual down like a wolf.
• 1:29:37
  Speaker 1: It's like the desire is pretty sharp down. Grizzly Bears
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 1: is a gradual down. Black Bears is a flat line.
• 1:29:45
  Speaker 1: Mm hmm. I'm like, oh, there he is. I suppose
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 1: we should go over there and get him. Yeah, come,
• 1:29:53
  Speaker 1: let's go, let's go. Yeah. There's a lot that goes
• 1:29:56
  Speaker 1: into how quilthy that empathy threshold is reached, and I
• 1:30:01
  Speaker 1: think that's I don't know, it's a it's not something
• 1:30:04
  Speaker 1: that we should never necessarily like strive to push through
• 1:30:08
  Speaker 1: that or or to you know, not think about it
• 1:30:12
  Speaker 1: too hard, because it's upsetting to think about, you know,
• 1:30:15
  Speaker 1: killing this elk. And I think it's okay you can
• 1:30:19
  Speaker 1: be upset about it a little bit but also want
• 1:30:21
  Speaker 1: to kill it and go through with it. But and
• 1:30:24
  Speaker 1: it's okay if you're like, I cannot just make that
• 1:30:29
  Speaker 1: wolf into um into something I don't have empathy for.
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 1: You know, if if the if the reasons to kill
• 1:30:37
  Speaker 1: it don't outweigh the kind of sad feeling it would
• 1:30:42
  Speaker 1: give you to kill out why why push through that?
• 1:30:44
  Speaker 1: You know? And there's something I know and and and
• 1:30:46
  Speaker 1: I'm listening. I think that people. Yeah, I think it's
• 1:30:49
  Speaker 1: something that it's a valuable thing for people to discuss
• 1:30:52
  Speaker 1: and talk about. I do think also it's important that
• 1:30:56
  Speaker 1: people recognize it as pretty arbitrary. Yeah, okay, very personal
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 1: and very arbitrary. And I only have problems with that
• 1:31:03
  Speaker 1: when people want to start legislating based on their personal
• 1:31:07
  Speaker 1: arbitrary perception of it, because I'm like, okay, I talked
• 1:31:14
  Speaker 1: without serie day with someone like if you go and
• 1:31:15
  Speaker 1: buy like, if you buy a box at Chicken McNuggets, right,
• 1:31:19
  Speaker 1: how many chickens are in that box in the way
• 1:31:22
  Speaker 1: they produce that ship. It's not like one chicken, A
• 1:31:25
  Speaker 1: dozen damn chickens in there all blend it up in
• 1:31:28
  Speaker 1: a blender together. So I'm like, oh, just imagine cuddling
• 1:31:33
  Speaker 1: all those twelve little chicks, right, But it's like you're
• 1:31:37
  Speaker 1: not invited to think about it. So I think that
• 1:31:40
  Speaker 1: when some people do run the calculations in their head
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 1: and they're like and they arrive at this thing where like,
• 1:31:45
  Speaker 1: I wouldn't want to hunt black bears. Therefore I'm going
• 1:31:50
  Speaker 1: to really push to make it that no one can
• 1:31:52
  Speaker 1: hunt black bears because it's upsetting for them to think
• 1:31:54
  Speaker 1: about it's upsetting for me to think about all those
• 1:31:57
  Speaker 1: little baby chicks. So it's some people feel like obligated
• 1:32:04
  Speaker 1: to really pursue pushing their line. Yeah, and that's the
• 1:32:11
  Speaker 1: only time it starts to be not offensive to me.
• 1:32:12
  Speaker 1: But it just I started to get a little skittish
• 1:32:15
  Speaker 1: when when that happens. I think it's always going on.
• 1:32:18
  Speaker 1: You know, if you if you watch the way initiatives
• 1:32:20
  Speaker 1: work and in the political cycle, it's always going on
• 1:32:23
  Speaker 1: that people are like coming up with arbitrarily arriving at
• 1:32:28
  Speaker 1: their favorites and then and then trying to like legislate
• 1:32:31
  Speaker 1: their favorites when it's when it is entirely arbitrary. Yeah, Um,
• 1:32:39
  Speaker 1: that's true. But I think that it's going to be
• 1:32:43
  Speaker 1: a constant battle all the time between our sort of
• 1:32:47
  Speaker 1: historic cultural attitude towards wildlife and um are your natural
• 1:32:54
  Speaker 1: areas in general of this is here for us and
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 1: we can just take I think that's one extreme end
• 1:33:03
  Speaker 1: and then there's you know, it can't be touched and
• 1:33:07
  Speaker 1: let's ignore the fact that that we're predators and have
• 1:33:10
  Speaker 1: a desire to engage with nature in that way. Um.
• 1:33:14
  Speaker 1: So if those extremes keep fighting and we keep meaning
• 1:33:16
  Speaker 1: in the middle, that's you still want to have both
• 1:33:19
  Speaker 1: both ends, maybe because I feel, um, historically the like
• 1:33:26
  Speaker 1: when I look at just the historic wildlife, the enemy
• 1:33:30
  Speaker 1: is uh, the just take right, Like what happened to
• 1:33:35
  Speaker 1: what happened to American wildlife in the late ag ear
• 1:33:39
  Speaker 1: was having absolutely no regard for the future, no comprehension
• 1:33:44
  Speaker 1: of the finiteness of our resources. Further than that Abrahamic
• 1:33:50
  Speaker 1: you know, like Leopold calls like this Abrahamic concept of
• 1:33:53
  Speaker 1: land where it somehow everything was like given to your
• 1:33:57
  Speaker 1: god given right. Yeah, like this you have this like
• 1:34:00
  Speaker 1: you like this divine right to just destroy and a
• 1:34:05
  Speaker 1: divine duty to civilize. So that's like the old enemy
• 1:34:13
  Speaker 1: and that has been largely vanquished in this country. I'm
• 1:34:17
  Speaker 1: not saying globally, but that attitude has been defeated. Yeah,
• 1:34:21
  Speaker 1: you know, it's it's rude. Is still there, but but
• 1:34:24
  Speaker 1: we've arrived at a place where you legally squashed it. Right.
• 1:34:29
  Speaker 1: The new enemy now, like the new threat now, I feel,
• 1:34:33
  Speaker 1: is the other side of it, which is the complete
• 1:34:37
  Speaker 1: dissociation with wildlife. And it's something that we just have
• 1:34:40
  Speaker 1: to look at out the window of a car and
• 1:34:44
  Speaker 1: it has nothing to do with our lives anymore. That
• 1:34:47
  Speaker 1: it's an art, it's a relic of the past, and
• 1:34:49
  Speaker 1: it's just meant for observation. There's no entanglement. Yeah, I know,
• 1:34:55
  Speaker 1: what do you think of all? I got a concluding
• 1:34:58
  Speaker 1: thought just after my bathroom break. You're gonna hit me
• 1:35:02
  Speaker 1: with that. I'm thinking we need to have Calmon back again,
• 1:35:08
  Speaker 1: because we took a little break and I got the
• 1:35:10
  Speaker 1: chatter up about her early hunt experiences and there's a
• 1:35:13
  Speaker 1: lot to talk about there and we didn't even get
• 1:35:14
  Speaker 1: to that. Yeah we didn't. How many animals do we
• 1:35:19
  Speaker 1: miss off? We're just getting started on my resume and
• 1:35:23
  Speaker 1: I don't even like to know, just like a real
• 1:35:24
  Speaker 1: quick like how even like how it's done. What the
• 1:35:30
  Speaker 1: tactic of of traffing wolves? Yeah, when they when they
• 1:35:34
  Speaker 1: put collars on wolves or catching my foot traps, Ye, paddles,
• 1:35:38
  Speaker 1: padded jaws, Yeah, put in line springs in them. Um,
• 1:35:42
  Speaker 1: they're just I mean they're they're no different. They've just
• 1:35:45
  Speaker 1: got pats. So you look a double coil sprain with
• 1:35:48
  Speaker 1: pats and then you get one in a trap and
• 1:35:52
  Speaker 1: you drug it and put a collar on and kind
• 1:35:57
  Speaker 1: of the standard use urine to lure them, all kinds
• 1:36:03
  Speaker 1: of stuff, all kinds no, not bait, um, yeah, sin lures.
• 1:36:10
  Speaker 1: They are so smart and they they they tuned up
• 1:36:16
  Speaker 1: really fast, and so sink control in the area of
• 1:36:20
  Speaker 1: your trap is really important. In fact, so the trapper
• 1:36:24
  Speaker 1: that trapped for this project would have everybody else they're
• 1:36:28
  Speaker 1: just sitting the back of the truck because you know,
• 1:36:31
  Speaker 1: I didn't want our foot putt smell around. Um. And
• 1:36:37
  Speaker 1: then just disguising these traps really well and using different
• 1:36:41
  Speaker 1: sint lures. And it's not it's not easy because um,
• 1:36:46
  Speaker 1: they are so smart and the slightest, the little thing
• 1:36:49
  Speaker 1: wrong is gonna make them skittish. I've had so I've
• 1:36:52
  Speaker 1: done a lot of trail camera work over the last
• 1:36:55
  Speaker 1: couple of summers with wolves, and even they're they get
• 1:36:58
  Speaker 1: wary of those. You know, I have so many videos
• 1:37:01
  Speaker 1: of them just slinking around my camera. They somehow know
• 1:37:04
  Speaker 1: that it's there. I've don't like it. They don't like it,
• 1:37:07
  Speaker 1: and I don't know. I've I've tried, um, putting like
• 1:37:12
  Speaker 1: fur bowls in my hands and then grabbing the camera
• 1:37:15
  Speaker 1: with that so I'm not even touching the camera. They've
• 1:37:17
  Speaker 1: got to and I have. You know, they've got the
• 1:37:21
  Speaker 1: black light so they supposedly can't see it, and you
• 1:37:24
  Speaker 1: get pictures of their staring right at it. They know,
• 1:37:27
  Speaker 1: so they're they're pretty savvy. Yeah, it's a sheen to
• 1:37:30
  Speaker 1: it or something something or maybe a tiny noise. I
• 1:37:35
  Speaker 1: don't know. It's hard to figure out. Nice to trap
• 1:37:38
  Speaker 1: Fox and Kyo would be the UM. All the precautions
• 1:37:42
  Speaker 1: like you die and why actually traps that storm and
• 1:37:44
  Speaker 1: boxes full of hay. Only use rubber gloves, clean your
• 1:37:49
  Speaker 1: rubber gloves any to every time. Only use rubber boots
• 1:37:51
  Speaker 1: clean every time, disinfect everything and um and then you
• 1:37:56
  Speaker 1: know when you bed the trap and you cover it,
• 1:37:59
  Speaker 1: you know, half inch three quarter inches of dirt if
• 1:38:01
  Speaker 1: that trap had any wobble, and they just it's like,
• 1:38:05
  Speaker 1: but you're stepping on ship the wobbles all the time.
• 1:38:08
  Speaker 1: They're walking to the right. But how many times did
• 1:38:11
  Speaker 1: he place his foot? He places foot thousands of times
• 1:38:15
  Speaker 1: every day, but like how often is something under just
• 1:38:18
  Speaker 1: under the soil. It's just different. They're nervous because they're
• 1:38:21
  Speaker 1: they're nervous because yeah, so you you asked them to
• 1:38:25
  Speaker 1: come in, and once you pinch one's toe, man, they
• 1:38:27
  Speaker 1: get very very difficult. You'd even then going like if
• 1:38:30
  Speaker 1: you had like a dirt hole set or a cent
• 1:38:31
  Speaker 1: post set, you know, when you got your trap, you know,
• 1:38:35
  Speaker 1: nine inches back, three inches off center, and then you'd
• 1:38:39
  Speaker 1: want to bed in a couple of them to three
• 1:38:41
  Speaker 1: feet back because he's not expecting them to be there,
• 1:38:43
  Speaker 1: you know. But they it's just like they just there's
• 1:38:47
  Speaker 1: they're just being so frustrated, just like dread Like when
• 1:38:50
  Speaker 1: he came out and saw your trap excavated, Like when
• 1:38:53
  Speaker 1: you dig around the outside jaw and expose the jaw,
• 1:38:56
  Speaker 1: you're like, I will never catch this thing. Yeah, and
• 1:38:59
  Speaker 1: he will come and do this every night. That's that's
• 1:39:02
  Speaker 1: the I think the fun thing about research trapping is
• 1:39:05
  Speaker 1: there's an added challenge of a you're not always trapping
• 1:39:09
  Speaker 1: in a place where that animals plentiful. UM. So for example,
• 1:39:13
  Speaker 1: I first trapped links in Maine where there were many more,
• 1:39:16
  Speaker 1: and it was it was a lot easier. We call
• 1:39:19
  Speaker 1: a lot of animals um, although catching females we had
• 1:39:22
  Speaker 1: to get trickier with because they just it seems like
• 1:39:25
  Speaker 1: in general across species, a lot of times the females
• 1:39:27
  Speaker 1: are harder to get and older animals. So if you
• 1:39:30
  Speaker 1: care about getting a nice slice of the demographic, you know,
• 1:39:34
  Speaker 1: young adult male female, that that adds the challenge. And
• 1:39:39
  Speaker 1: then you're trapping somewhere where there aren't many. So trapping
• 1:39:42
  Speaker 1: links in Washington, Uh, they're threatened here and there's less
• 1:39:49
  Speaker 1: than fifty probably, and so there's a there's it's a
• 1:39:54
  Speaker 1: whole winter of trapping. And we caught four. And there's
• 1:39:58
  Speaker 1: this one female with kittens that we just pulled out
• 1:40:01
  Speaker 1: every stop for and UM got her into trap once,
• 1:40:06
  Speaker 1: but she got away before we got there. We're not
• 1:40:08
  Speaker 1: trying to catch those and leg holds, right, they wouldn't
• 1:40:11
  Speaker 1: hold up. Probably they can get frost bite. Yeah, so
• 1:40:16
  Speaker 1: we just used they don't it's just not so it
• 1:40:18
  Speaker 1: just doesn't seem like a cat's gonna do well enough.
• 1:40:20
  Speaker 1: Foot trap people use them in the summer, Yeah, yeah,
• 1:40:24
  Speaker 1: but it's hard to get a permit for that. In
• 1:40:26
  Speaker 1: Washington for research, she guys using box traps. Box traps'larly
• 1:40:32
  Speaker 1: trap shy, but they get trap shy about box and
• 1:40:34
  Speaker 1: that's individual. So um. Some of them would go into
• 1:40:39
  Speaker 1: traps once they figured out that there was bait in there.
• 1:40:42
  Speaker 1: They'd go in them every night or so for a while,
• 1:40:45
  Speaker 1: and then they're like I said, the females though super
• 1:40:48
  Speaker 1: hard to catch, and this one in particular, I mean
• 1:40:50
  Speaker 1: we had when we ended up when the time that
• 1:40:53
  Speaker 1: we did catch her. This is a story that still
• 1:40:57
  Speaker 1: makes me sick to my stomach because it was so frustrating.
• 1:41:00
  Speaker 1: We've been targeting her the entire winner, and we'd extended
• 1:41:07
  Speaker 1: our season because we wanted to get her so bad
• 1:41:11
  Speaker 1: and on the last day we were out closing our
• 1:41:14
  Speaker 1: traps and we pull up to this trap who was
• 1:41:18
  Speaker 1: a We started setting double traps, so we'd have one
• 1:41:20
  Speaker 1: box trap backed up to another one. We'd cover all
• 1:41:25
  Speaker 1: sides of it with bows so that if a kitten
• 1:41:30
  Speaker 1: or one of the links went in one trap, the
• 1:41:34
  Speaker 1: only way for the kitten's mom or or figure out
• 1:41:38
  Speaker 1: what's going on, yeah, to get too closer to that
• 1:41:41
  Speaker 1: to be going the other trap. So we had a
• 1:41:43
  Speaker 1: double trap set, and we had we'd done away with
• 1:41:47
  Speaker 1: our whole treadle season or our treadle um trigger system,
• 1:41:53
  Speaker 1: so we had fishing line. We explained what a treadle.
• 1:41:59
  Speaker 1: You step on this stick and it triggers the trap
• 1:42:01
  Speaker 1: you step on, you step step on. It's like a
• 1:42:03
  Speaker 1: lot a lot of dead fall traps that way, because
• 1:42:06
  Speaker 1: it's just a trigger system where when it enters, it
• 1:42:08
  Speaker 1: puts its foot on a basic a like a like
• 1:42:12
  Speaker 1: a stick, like an inch or two off the ground, right, Yeah,
• 1:42:15
  Speaker 1: So this was so basically are trap sets were this
• 1:42:19
  Speaker 1: box trap. You cover the sides with bows so that
• 1:42:24
  Speaker 1: it's it's a tunnel through and you've got visuals out
• 1:42:28
  Speaker 1: in front of it. You're trying to get the links
• 1:42:29
  Speaker 1: in the area. And then you've got bait in the
• 1:42:31
  Speaker 1: back of the trap, and your hope is that they
• 1:42:34
  Speaker 1: will feel comfortable enough to walk into the trap to
• 1:42:38
  Speaker 1: get to the bait, and they'll step on this little
• 1:42:42
  Speaker 1: paddle that you've done your best to disguise with snow
• 1:42:44
  Speaker 1: and whatever, and they step on that and that triggers
• 1:42:47
  Speaker 1: the door. The door falls down reb like Ben Benion's
• 1:42:50
  Speaker 1: hog traps. Yeah, yeah, where they bumped the wire. Picture
• 1:42:54
  Speaker 1: that you had anything even like a piece of ply
• 1:42:57
  Speaker 1: would elevated. Where you put weight on that apply would yeah,
• 1:43:01
  Speaker 1: tips forward and the dogs. So it's kind of like
• 1:43:04
  Speaker 1: a like I have a heart trap, but these were
• 1:43:06
  Speaker 1: homemade and bigger. What kind of weight? Uh, what does
• 1:43:09
  Speaker 1: it take trigger that trap? You tried to just have
• 1:43:11
  Speaker 1: him on a hair but it was just weird enough
• 1:43:15
  Speaker 1: that it was and they'd get bugged up with ice
• 1:43:18
  Speaker 1: and whatever. So they weren't working well enough that we
• 1:43:22
  Speaker 1: were catching cats and they were wary of them. So
• 1:43:26
  Speaker 1: what we did was we took those out and we
• 1:43:29
  Speaker 1: took um fishing line and we drung it kind of
• 1:43:32
  Speaker 1: towards the back in a sort of a like a
• 1:43:36
  Speaker 1: zi these shape, So it came from one side to
• 1:43:40
  Speaker 1: the other and looped back and then went out the
• 1:43:44
  Speaker 1: top of the trap. Then we had a a mouse
• 1:43:48
  Speaker 1: trap mounted on the top of the trap and um
• 1:43:54
  Speaker 1: that would throw the trigger. They would throw the gate. Yeah,
• 1:43:56
  Speaker 1: So the fishing line was um tied to the little
• 1:44:00
  Speaker 1: fake cheese thing, and then we had the door was
• 1:44:04
  Speaker 1: on a on a little piece of rope and you
• 1:44:06
  Speaker 1: loop that over the the um the lowell thing, yeah,
• 1:44:13
  Speaker 1: the bail, so that when the cheese got pulled on
• 1:44:18
  Speaker 1: even slightly we had birds tripping these things. When it
• 1:44:21
  Speaker 1: got pulled on even slightly by an animal in the trap,
• 1:44:26
  Speaker 1: the door would close. So anyway, so we've gone through
• 1:44:30
  Speaker 1: all this. It's our last day. We're closing traps, and
• 1:44:33
  Speaker 1: we pull up to the trap and the doors are
• 1:44:36
  Speaker 1: closed because it's a double trap. We leap off our
• 1:44:40
  Speaker 1: snowmobiles and the trap is empty, and we could tell
• 1:44:46
  Speaker 1: from the tracks what had happened was one either the
• 1:44:49
  Speaker 1: mom or the kitten, had gone in the trap, and
• 1:44:53
  Speaker 1: the other had obviously been upset about this and was was, um,
• 1:44:59
  Speaker 1: you know, trying to get at it. And we even
• 1:45:00
  Speaker 1: sat on top of it and all this stuff. But
• 1:45:02
  Speaker 1: before it got desperate enough to go into the other
• 1:45:04
  Speaker 1: trap and we would maybe even have both of them,
• 1:45:07
  Speaker 1: a little bit of snow build up at the bottom
• 1:45:10
  Speaker 1: of the door created a tiny gap in the between
• 1:45:13
  Speaker 1: the door and the top of the trap, and that
• 1:45:15
  Speaker 1: length squeezed out of there, so we missed. We never
• 1:45:21
  Speaker 1: caught that female. We came so close but never caught her.
• 1:45:26
  Speaker 1: So anyway, the point of all that is when you
• 1:45:30
  Speaker 1: have to catch certain individuals, you don't just get to
• 1:45:33
  Speaker 1: move on. It makes you get creative and get it's fun.
• 1:45:38
  Speaker 1: Even with beaver trapping, sometimes there's just that last female
• 1:45:41
  Speaker 1: that you really want to get out of there because
• 1:45:43
  Speaker 1: you want the whole family group or whatever, and you
• 1:45:45
  Speaker 1: just even that could be super tricky. So you found
• 1:45:49
  Speaker 1: that the females are harder to get the males like,
• 1:45:52
  Speaker 1: as a generalization, Yeah, yeah, I think just they're less,
• 1:45:57
  Speaker 1: less risky, more wary. A lot that I'd say in general,
• 1:46:02
  Speaker 1: the easiest is young males and experienced young males because
• 1:46:09
  Speaker 1: oftentimes they're finding themselves in strange areas to the more aggressive.
• 1:46:17
  Speaker 1: All right, man, we're gonna have to have you back
• 1:46:18
  Speaker 1: on and talk more about all this knocky deer concluding
• 1:46:21
  Speaker 1: thought yunning. Lots of similarities there between the animal kingdom
• 1:46:26
  Speaker 1: and in us. You know, the young males get in trouble.
• 1:46:30
  Speaker 1: Jared Diamond talks about Jared the you know, the physiologists
• 1:46:35
  Speaker 1: and among many other things. Jared Diamond talks about why
• 1:46:40
  Speaker 1: reckless behavior in males like how that would become selected
• 1:46:45
  Speaker 1: for in sexual selection, like why would why would you
• 1:46:50
  Speaker 1: know the propensity to do like ridiculous crazy ship that
• 1:46:55
  Speaker 1: will get you hurt? Wi is there? And why is
• 1:46:58
  Speaker 1: there an advantage there? And he thinks it's like getting
• 1:47:02
  Speaker 1: really ship faced drunk? Why is there? Why is that advanced?
• 1:47:05
  Speaker 1: Why is that selected for? And he he talks about,
• 1:47:09
  Speaker 1: I can't here if he was given this idea of
• 1:47:11
  Speaker 1: his own or given a summation of someone else's theory,
• 1:47:15
  Speaker 1: But it was that it's a demonstration of fitness because
• 1:47:19
  Speaker 1: you're basically saying like I'm so fit, I'm so fit
• 1:47:25
  Speaker 1: that I can afford to do these very risky behaviors
• 1:47:30
  Speaker 1: and that has over time had like a sexual advantage
• 1:47:36
  Speaker 1: and attracting females that you're like, now there's a specimen.
• 1:47:41
  Speaker 1: He can get that drunk. It'll still be okay because
• 1:47:50
  Speaker 1: there is something about it. You know why? It wasn't
• 1:47:53
  Speaker 1: just that sexual selection and adapted advantages wouldn't just make
• 1:47:57
  Speaker 1: you real timid people won't, you know? They don't want that.
• 1:48:02
  Speaker 1: They want that bull out that just comes screaming in
• 1:48:05
  Speaker 1: thrash and brush read it up. The guy hiding out
• 1:48:08
  Speaker 1: in the black timber. He doesn't he's not getting anywhere. Um,
• 1:48:12
  Speaker 1: all right, is that your concluding dot? No? Um, I
• 1:48:17
  Speaker 1: guess thanks for coming on. And I'm so stoked that
• 1:48:19
  Speaker 1: we have people like Carmen out there doing the good
• 1:48:23
  Speaker 1: work and getting this research done. And and now that
• 1:48:26
  Speaker 1: you're a hunter, it's even better, you know. I don't know.
• 1:48:29
  Speaker 1: We were talking about it off while we weren't recording,
• 1:48:32
  Speaker 1: but just getting somehow keeping science, um, you know, like
• 1:48:40
  Speaker 1: in the forefront, to keep you know, people making decisions
• 1:48:42
  Speaker 1: and not getting you know, the politics involved too much.
• 1:48:45
  Speaker 1: And um, yeah, I just hope we have more people
• 1:48:51
  Speaker 1: like Carmen out there doing wildlife research and helping us,
• 1:48:54
  Speaker 1: help the rest of us make this informed decisions. Yeah,
• 1:48:58
  Speaker 1: just find out about stuff. Yeah, keep learning. I don't
• 1:49:02
  Speaker 1: know anything thought. What are your concluding thoughts? Do you
• 1:49:04
  Speaker 1: had any anything you want to you want to try
• 1:49:07
  Speaker 1: to get the job or anything, or I would just
• 1:49:13
  Speaker 1: you don't have anything to gain from this. You're not
• 1:49:17
  Speaker 1: selling anything? Are you selling it? You know, like you
• 1:49:20
  Speaker 1: don't have like a T shirt company or anything. I mean,
• 1:49:25
  Speaker 1: as scientists, I think is important to try and reach
• 1:49:29
  Speaker 1: a wider audience. You know, you know, we had a
• 1:49:33
  Speaker 1: long discussion about that. Last we had a researcher on
• 1:49:36
  Speaker 1: who is a m the sociology research, and we had
• 1:49:41
  Speaker 1: a long discussion about um what I see as my
• 1:49:46
  Speaker 1: need for scientists too. As painful as it is for
• 1:49:51
  Speaker 1: them to translate their work for a popular audience, but
• 1:49:55
  Speaker 1: a lot of them, it's just a very uncomfortable It's
• 1:49:57
  Speaker 1: super place to go in because you live in a
• 1:50:00
  Speaker 1: world of caveats and reservations and not wanting to make
• 1:50:05
  Speaker 1: generalizations and not wanting to oversimplify things. And you enter
• 1:50:09
  Speaker 1: into a world where people like, so, what's it all mean? Yeah,
• 1:50:12
  Speaker 1: and you're like, that's not my job. I don't tell you.
• 1:50:15
  Speaker 1: I'm not here to tell you what to think about it,
• 1:50:18
  Speaker 1: to tell you what's there. I can tell you what's
• 1:50:20
  Speaker 1: going on, but I'm not going to translate it for you. Yeah. Yeah,
• 1:50:23
  Speaker 1: but scientists need to be able to do that effectively,
• 1:50:27
  Speaker 1: you know, so that their work isn't just being circulated
• 1:50:29
  Speaker 1: among other scientists. That's the only I talked about too,
• 1:50:32
  Speaker 1: is like someone's going to translate it. Why not be
• 1:50:34
  Speaker 1: in the driver's seat. Why let some Why let some
• 1:50:37
  Speaker 1: you know, Penny, any journalists read your paper and take
• 1:50:41
  Speaker 1: a stab at it when you can a little bit
• 1:50:42
  Speaker 1: try to guide it by getting out there with your messaging.
• 1:50:45
  Speaker 1: Of course, people can abuse it, and you wind up
• 1:50:47
  Speaker 1: having scientists who get accused of grandstanding, where everything they
• 1:50:51
  Speaker 1: do is meant to be outward facing, and they lose
• 1:50:53
  Speaker 1: their credibility. But I think that yeah, to uh, to
• 1:50:57
  Speaker 1: enter that uncomfortable space of coming in and to aching
• 1:51:00
  Speaker 1: something that's like really complicated and you're trying not to
• 1:51:03
  Speaker 1: make to read into it too much, and you're trying
• 1:51:06
  Speaker 1: not to be suayed by policy and personal opinion, and
• 1:51:10
  Speaker 1: then explain to people like, here's what's going on out there.
• 1:51:14
  Speaker 1: It's tough to distill it down because you can always
• 1:51:16
  Speaker 1: imagine your colleagues listening and jumping on you. Yeah. Yeah,
• 1:51:20
  Speaker 1: I mean it's it's definitely a skill. I mean, it
• 1:51:22
  Speaker 1: was taught in classes that I've taken. You talk about it, oh, definitely.
• 1:51:28
  Speaker 1: I mean a lot of scientists know, Okay, we've got
• 1:51:30
  Speaker 1: this problem. We need to figure out how to teach
• 1:51:34
  Speaker 1: people what we have found in a way that's understandable
• 1:51:38
  Speaker 1: and yet still accurate and true to what we've found,
• 1:51:42
  Speaker 1: you know, because it's a balance between making it understandable
• 1:51:46
  Speaker 1: and also not missing important points of your research or
• 1:51:52
  Speaker 1: simplifying it too. Whatever. My one of my brothers, you know,
• 1:51:56
  Speaker 1: he's a researcher, and part of the is it's kind
• 1:52:00
  Speaker 1: of built into his it's sort of built into his
• 1:52:04
  Speaker 1: job description and some amount of public facing, some amount
• 1:52:08
  Speaker 1: of public facing work. Yeah, it's a skill. You don't
• 1:52:12
  Speaker 1: have a great scientist who gives a talk and nobody
• 1:52:15
  Speaker 1: can understand or follow it, and so that's that doesn't
• 1:52:18
  Speaker 1: work either, you know, just as much as oversimplifying it
• 1:52:22
  Speaker 1: or you know, not explaining enough, it doesn't work. So yeah,
• 1:52:28
  Speaker 1: it's a skill. Yeah, it's a lot easier just to
• 1:52:30
  Speaker 1: have every answer be I don't know, it's complicated, Yeah,
• 1:52:34
  Speaker 1: too complicated. I can't explain. Yeah, all right, well thanks
• 1:52:37
  Speaker 1: to we have to yeah you have to come back on. Yeah, definitely,
• 1:52:43
  Speaker 1: thank you.